Vaccinations will reassure travelers, MGTO anticipates

The city’s vaccination scheme will give people greater reassurance when travelling to Macau once the border reopens, director of the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes told the media on the sidelines of an event on February 27.
Fernandes disclosed that daily visitor arrivals into Macau during “recent days” — with the best day recording around 19,000 visitors — were higher than those during the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday.
Considering the city’s vaccination scheme and China’s growing vaccination rate, Fernandes said she hopes the scheme offer travelers greater confidence as the border reopens for travel.
As of 9 p.m. February 26, a total of 29,353 Macau ID holders had registered to receive a Covid-19 vaccine. Among them, 25,897 signed up for Sinopharm’s inactivated vaccine, 3,369 for BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine and the remaining 87 for the AstraZeneca vaccine, a form of replication-defective adenovirus vector vaccine.
China was the first country to mandate vaccination against Covid-19 in July last year.
As of February 28, China had administered a total of 40.5 million vaccine doses, as the country with the second-highest number of vaccinations worldwide, just behind the 72.8 million doses given by the United States, according to a vaccine tracker compiled by Bloomberg.
This figure translates to 2.89 injected doses for every 100 persons in China. This is relatively low compared to other countries, as Israel, the U.K. and the U.S. have given 88.4, 30.6 and 21.9 doses for every 100 persons respectively.
Globally, upwards of 236 million doses of vaccine have been administered in 103 countries so far.
Fernandes also stated that the local tourism industry is aspiring to launch more quality travel routes and tourism products to entice mainland holidaymakers — most of whom are considered as free independent travelers (FITs).
MGTO will offer the industry support to promote the city’s tourism offerings, she said.
Macau saw a total of 90,615 tourist arrivals during the seven-day CNY Golden Week in 2021 from February 11 to 17, down 65.3% from 261,454 in the same period last year.
The decline was attributed to travel advisories issued by China’s municipal governments, which advised their residents to avoid traveling during the CNY period.
Overall, the average daily arrival numbers during the holiday stood at 12,945, falling short of Fernandes’ previous forecast of around 16,000 to 20,000 arrivals.