Virus-free Palau to open Taiwan travel bubble

The tiny Pacific nation of Palau has announced plans to open a travel bubble with Taiwan in a move it hopes will boost the tourism-reliant economy.

“The date has finally arrived, it’s time to open up,” President Surangel Whipps told reporters late Wednesday, almost exactly a year after the nation closed its borders.

Whipps said he would take a charter flight to Taipei later this month and return on April 1 with a group of 110 Taiwanese tourists.

From there, the plan is to gradually have 16 flights a week on the route, a major lifeline for an economy that before the pandemic relied on tourism for more than half its gross domestic product.

Palau, which lies about 1,000 kilometers, or 600 miles, east of the Philippines, is one of the few places on Earth never to have recorded a case of Covid-19.