KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 (NNN-Bernama) \u2013\u00a0Capital A Bhd chief executive officer Tony Fernandes has called for a more sustainable approach to aid the region\u2019s aviation industry to recover\u00a0from the impact of pandemic-driven movement restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said that travel restrictions make sense in the early stages of an outbreak and, over the past two years, Malaysia has learned to deal with COVID-19 with masks, social distancing and vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen cases are few and contagion paths traceable, it buys time to learn more about the virus, prepare hospitals and roll out vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut a key lesson that has not sunk in is the futility of long-term travel restrictions,\u201d he said in his LinkedIn account today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fernandes explained that travel bans tend to stay on for a while even when no longer useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOnce a virus or variant is freely circulating in a country, any imported infections make very little difference to the burden of the disease but citizens suffer disproportionately due to social and economic impact of the travel ban,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another issue, he added, is that people still get permission to cross borders, such as essential workers and diplomats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSuccessful long-term travel bans like those seen in Australia and New Zealand came at an enormous cost to both their own global links and to their own citizens, and are unsustainable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe better and more sustainable approach is to promote cost-effective policies (vaccines and boosters) and deploy common sense,\u201d Fernandes said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also said that a ban should not be imposed just to be seen as decisive, as measures should always aim to be proportionate and minimally disruptive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
— NNN-BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 5 (NNN-Bernama) \u2013\u00a0Capital A Bhd chief executive officer Tony Fernandes has called for a more sustainable approach to aid the region\u2019s aviation industry to recover\u00a0from the impact of pandemic-driven movement restrictions. He said that travel restrictions make sense in the early stages of an outbreak and, over the past two years, Malaysia has learned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":162787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[215,288,300,318],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162776"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=162776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/162787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=162776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=162776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=162776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}