The Best Places to be During the Pandemic

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread in many countries, and the containment of the virus is challenging elsewhere with only a slow reduction in infection rates, we look at some countries and their handling of the crisis which has led to an earlier recovery of aviation in those nations:

Taiwan

They quickly closed borders and banned exports of surgical masks from the very first emergence, also the government ensured people in quarantine were abiding by the rules by using contact tracing and mobile sim-tracking. Medical officials held briefings for the public daily. Instead of closing down the economy when the virus outbreak happened, businesses were kept open by using aggressive precautionary measures like taking temperatures and providing sanitizer before entering.

Singapore Their method was an aggressive approach to contact-tracing (including scanning people’s IDs at supermarkets) and widespread testing. The government built temporary bed spaces at extremely fast speeds to house COVID-19 patients, keeping the casualty rate low. The country’s central bank also fortified the economic response by sharply easing monetary policies by levels.

South Korea

They developed Covid-19 tests and scaled up production to thousands-per-day while its own toll was still below a hundred. They did an outstanding job with vigilance, extensive testing and contact tracing, isolation, and treatment of confirmed cases. The economy stimulus has been as well conducted: Cash payments to most citizens.

Vietnam The overreaction made Vietnam a virus success. They chose prevention early, and on a massive scale: Closing the borders and increasing health checks at borders and other vulnerable places, closing schools until mid-May. By mid-March, people entered the country - and anyone within the country who'd had contact with a confirmed case were all sent to quarantine centres for 14 days. Costs were mostly covered by the government.

Until July 2020, Vietnam’s domestic flights have recovered over 80% due to government’s tourism stimulus in cutting down taxes of related businesses; and economic supports to airlines for domestic passengers’ cheaper flight prices. On 12th June, the government also informed Vietnam will reopen overseas flights from July 2020 to Korea, China, Singapore, South East Asian countries, potentially France with acceptance of all sides’ governments.

New Zealand

The quick action of shutting down the country and sclosing borders to outside travellers, shutting down non-essential businesses, also only allowing people to interact with others within their home. They sent emergency text messages that plainly explained what was expected of individuals and Prime Minister Jacinda Adern sent Facebook Live videos to notify people. Clarity and decisiveness are saving New Zealand from the storm.

There is as well a raft of tax reforms aimed at helping the country’s small businesses.

Australia The coordinated response of Australian government officials across the political spectrum, and most critically their deference to scientists, made them one of the best tackling Covid-19 in the world. It’s noteworthy to mention about the economic stimulus of wage subsidies, doubling unemployment benefits and free childcare for all.

Australia and New Zealand are talking about a possible bubble allowing travel between the two countries. This would provide a significant boost to their aviation and tourism sectors, enabling when combined with domestic recoveries their passenger traffic and tourism numbers to come closer to pre-crisis levels.

Canada Canada did a good job on public messaging coordination and monetary support to people. They rely on science to guide the healthcare responses of virus.

Germany Considered as a model within Europe. There were widespread tests, extensive public communications and efficient social distancing guidelines.

As the result, Germany sees a positive week-on-week capacity growth at the end of June 2020:

Greece

The country applied strict lockdown and procured more ICU beds and health workers.

Iceland The country adopted broad and free tests and contact-tracing regime to identify and isolate coronavirus-patients. In proportion to the population, they have already screened five times as many people as South Korea and instituted a thorough tracking system to avoid lock down or shutting of schools.

Airlines in these European countries are accelerating their return to flight schedules to serve 45% - 90% of short/medium-haul and up to more than 70% of long-haul destinations. Many operators can operate about half of the number of aircraft that were in operation before Covid: Between 22 and 29 June, an extra 3.3 million seats. Germany has the best revival of flights until July with Easyjet, Ryanair and Lufthansa resuming operations.

UAE There were stringent social distancing measures (lockdowns + curfews, even banning public Eid Al Fatr prayers and celebrations) and extensive disinfection - cleaning campaigns. The government levies $5,500 fines on anyone who shares any medical information on social media that doesn’t adhere to the government’s narrative.

Starting from middle of July, by August, various carriers in UAE expect to reach up to 45% of pre-COVID-19 volumes.

Among above countries, Australia-New Zealand-South Korea-Taiwan-Vietnam which have been doing well with virus containment are the ones contributing the highest number of visitors (up to 40%) to Singapore; and vice versa; so a strong and early recovery is foreseeable among the circle of these nations.

In general, the majority of countries have predicted most domestic markets could reach pre-crisis levels later this year, with domestic travel even potentially surpassing pre-crisis levels, if local virus containment is successful but lingering issues abroad lead to a higher-than-normal portion of residents holidaying in their own countries.