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MoH: Malaysia-Singapore VTL flight, bus tickets back on sale, but quota halved

A woman waits to board a bus at the Larkin Sentral Bus Terminal in Johor Baru November 29, 2021. — Bernama pic
A woman waits to board a bus at the Larkin Sentral Bus Terminal in Johor Baru November 29, 2021. — Bernama pic

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 21 — The Ministry of Health (MoH) has announced the resumption of ticket sales for the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) between Malaysia and Singapore with immediate effect.

In a statement, MoH said this covered both the VTL land and air schemes, following the temporary suspension of ticket sales on December 23, 2021.

“MoH wishes to notify the public that bus and air tickets for both VTL initiatives have been reopened from today onwards,” the statement read.

The minstry said, however, that the quota for the bus and flight tickets had been reduced by 50 per cent from what it was before.

"Passengers who have purchased tickets for travel dates after January 20, 2022 before the announcement on the suspension of the ticket sales was made, they are allowed to continue their journey using the VTL initiative according to the quota set earlier," the statement read.

MoH also said risk assessments of the Covid-19 situation in both countries would be conducted regularly to determine if the ticket quota should be revised in the future.

“MoH wishes to remind all VTL travellers to do a personal RTK-Ag antigen test on the second, fourth and sixth day after arrival and a professional RTK-Ag test on the third and fifth days of arrival.

“We ask all travellers to be responsible and adhere to the SOPs in place to reduce the risk of infection,” it added.

In December, airlines and bus operators in Malaysia were directed by MoH to temporarily suspend the sale of travel tickets to Singapore under the VTL scheme after Singapore detected a Covid-19 cluster involving the highly-transmissible Omicron variant.

Malaysia and Singapore initiated the VTL programme for land and air travel on November 29.

*A previous version of this story contained errors which have since been corrected.

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