phnom penh cambodia reopened its borders to fully vaccinated travellers on monday two weeks earlier than originally planned as it emerges from a lengthy lockdown bolstered by one of the worlds highest rates of immunisation against covid19the programme allows visitors to skip quarantine measures if they are fully vaccinated test negative 72 hours before they enter the country and test negative upon their arrivalprime minister hun sen decided to move up the opening from november 30 to november 15 to start revitalising the countrys economic and social activity as soon as possible buoyed by the fact that 88 of cambodians are now fully vaccinatedthe situation has changed hun sen said in an audio message shared on social mediathe previous plan had been to phase in the reopening by initially restricting travellers to two seaside provinces but the new scheme means fully vaccinated travellers will be free to visit anywhere in the country after a negative test the ministry saidunvaccinated travellers will still have to undergo a strict 14day quarantine upon arrival and undergo a series of coronavirus tests before they can travel furthercambodia in 2019 before the pandemic received 66 million foreigners who accounted for nearly 5 billion in revenue most of them visited the famous angkor temples in siem reap province and seaside destinations according to the tourism ministryin 2020 the number of visitors dropped sharply to 13 million and earnings from them plunged to about 1 billioncambodias vaccination drive started slowly but has ramped up rapidly children from age 5 and up have been included in the program since the beginning of novemberrestrictions on domestic tourism schools and other sectors were also lifted at the start of the monththe health ministry reported 52 new covid19 cases monday and five deaths bringing cambodias total to 119588 cases and 2872 fatalities since the start of the pandemic