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 decided to reopen the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) that was suspended from December 23, 2021 until January 20, 2022.
In a statement, MoH said the VTL land and air schemes will resume starting today.
“MoH wishes to notify the public that bus and air tickets for both VTL initiatives have been reopened from today onwards.”
The country will halve the ticket quota, however, for air and land travel.
Increase in ticket quotas will be subject to risk assessments from time to time depending on the Covid-19 situation in both countries, he said.
For passengers who have purchased tickets to travel after January 20, 2022 and made these purchases before the announcement of the suspension of travel, they will be allowed to travel based on the quotas set prior to today’s announcement.
“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,” they added.
Airlines and bus operators in Malaysia had to temporarily stop selling 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.