We cannot afford to delay any measure to resuscitate the country’s tourist industry.

We have waited for two whole years since March 18, 2020, for the country’s borders to reopen.

Prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced on Tuesday that beginning April 1, the country will reopen its borders as the coronavirus pandemic transitions to the endemic phase.

So far we have reported more than 3.65 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 33,000 deaths over the past two years. Given the current daily new infection numbers hovering around the 30,000-mark, the situation is apparently still quite bad, even though the mortality and serious illness rates have fallen.

This, coupled with the high vaccination rate, has prompted the government to make the crucial decision of reopening the national borders and transitioning to the endemic phase.

Reopening national borders means Malaysians will soon be able to freely visit any country that has also reopened its borders to us, while foreigners can enter Malaysia after doing Covid tests two days before departure and within 24 hours upon arrival here, while fully vaccinated individuals will no longer have to go through mandatory quarantine.

National recovery council chairman Muhyiddin Yassin has hoped that the government will draw up clear SOPs for visitors.

Reopening the national borders is definitely a good thing, but the SOPs must not be too complicated as this will confuse the tourists.

We still have three weeks to draw up the SOPs and train the support personnel at immigration checkpoints. It is hoped that excessive congestion and confusion will not happen when the borders reopen.

Sure enough foreigners will not flood into the country immediately, but reopening the borders has been a very major decision to revive the ailing tourist industry.

ACCCIM’s statistics show that 26.1 million foreigners visited Malaysia in 2019, spending RM86.1 billion or about 6% of the country’s GDP. But during the first nine months of 2021, only about 70,000 foreigners entered the country, spending only RM123 million.

As such, we cannot afford to delay any measure to resuscitate the tourism-related sector, including travel agencies, hotels, F&B, aviation, retail and transportation, among others.

Transitioning to the endemic phase means the many restrictions imposed over the past two years will be drastically eased. However, for the sake of our health as well as that of people around us such as our families, friends and colleagues, it is still necessary for us to continue putting on face masks, regularly sanitizing our hands and constantly keeping safe social distances, simply because we still have people with low resistance at home, such as our aged parents and unvaccinated children.

Although the government says the use of MySejahtera will be eased and restrictions at some public venues will be lifted, that does not mean we can do anything we want because the virus is still very much around us.

Let’s stay safe until the last bit of virus is wiped out.