Pacific bubble plan: Solomon Airlines pushes for regional travel grouping

Solomon Airlines and the country's tourist authority are pushing for a travel bubble with other countries in Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia. The airline has grounded international flights until the end of August but the tourist group says the Covid-free status of a group of nations makes the time right to work on a travel bubble. Earlier this week, no cases of Covid-19 had been reported in Solomon Islands or Vanuatu, nor in the sovereign states of Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu, the organisations said. Josefa Tuamoto, CE of Tourism Solomons said many countries in the wider region had adopted new screening protocols and are now better informed and equipped to diagnose and treat Covid-19 should an issue occur. "While Australia and New Zealand continue to explore options for a transtasman bubble, we believe there is merit in forming a travel bubble of intra-regional Pacific nation groupings," he said. In total the countries have a population of about 1.5 million but the bubble would cover a vast area of the Pacific. "An arrangement between Solomon Islands and Vanuatu for example, could help our countries in their preparedness before opening borders to larger leisure destinations," he said.<br/>