Malaysia’s tourism sector is set to receive a significant boost as citizens are now permitted to travel overseas without the need to apply for MyTravelPass from the Immigration Department.

However, only those who have been fully vaccinated can travel to other states and overseas, and the obligatory 14-day quarantine is still in place for people entering Malaysia.

In addition, interstate travel is still banned within areas under the enhanced movement control order (EMCO), and the Prime Minister has emphasised that measures such as social distancing and mask wearing are still in force.

“After 229 days, Malaysia has achieved 90% vaccination rate for adult population The government’s move to allow interstate travel follows the achievement of 90% fully vaccinated status among Malaysia’s adult population,” according to AmInvestment Bank.

“Recall that Malaysia’s vaccination programme started on February 2021 with 60 doses dispensed on the first day – 41 in Kuala Lumpur, 18 in Putrajaya and 1 in Sarawak. Since then, we have progressed well, hitting the daily vaccination peak of 579,774 on July 28, 2021.”

As of October 10, 90% of Malaysian adults have been fully vaccinated, whilst 65.2% of the total population have been fully vaccinated.

AmInvestment Bank said this is an important milestone as it surpasses that of a number of developed countries such as the U.S. and Australia, where just 56.8% and 50.2% of their populations have been fully vaccinated, respectively.

“Most Asean countries are adopting ‘living with Covid’ strategy. We gather that Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore and Brunei are moving towards ‘living with Covid’ strategy instead of ‘zero Covid’ strategy favoured previously.

“For example, Indonesia has, on October 2, allowed 10,000 people to attend the opening ceremony of its maiden large-scale sports event. As for Singapore, the city state has announced on October 9 that it will allow quarantine-free travel into the country for eight more countries,” said AmInvestment Bank.