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The Vinpearl leisure complex in Phu Quoc boasts a 12,000-room hotel complex, an amusement park, an 18-hole golf course, a casino, a safari park and a miniature Venice (Photo: AFP/Nhac Nguyen) - 

Tour guide Lai Chi Phuc has been counting down the days until travellers return to the white-sand beaches and thick tropical jungle of Vietnam's Phu Quoc, a once-poor fishing island pushing to be Asia's next holiday hotspot as COVID-19 pandemic restrictions ease.

On Saturday (Nov 20), around 200 South Koreans touched down on the island, which lies a few kilometres off Cambodia in the azure waters of the Gulf of Thailand, after a vaccine passport scheme kicked off this month in Vietnam.

Among the arrivals was Tae Hyeong Lee, who was returning to the island for a third time and keen to make a beeline for the beach.

"It's wonderful to be here. This is my first time travelling out of South Korea since the pandemic started," he told AFP.

But others may skip the lazy beach break in favour of action and entertainment as they shuffle between a 12,000-room hotel complex, an amusement park, an 18-hole golf course, a casino, a safari park and a miniature Venice.

The US$2.8-billion leisure resort, part of the "sleepless city" model, opened six months ago as COVID-19 ravaged tourism across the world - and as other Asian countries reliant on the industry, like Thailand, were rethinking their mass tourism frameworks.

For 33-year-old Phuc, who remembers a poverty-stricken childhood where "everyone wanted to escape Phu Quoc", the island's growing popularity gave him a way to return home after years of scratching out a living as a salesman in the nearby cities of the Mekong Delta.

"But it's a pity also," he told AFP, lamenting the loss of the island's palm-fringed beaches to resorts.

Ahead of Saturday's reopening, staff at Vinpearl resort - where the arrivals are staying - swept beaches, arranged cutlery on tables and laid out sunbeds. Others busied themselves painting delicate flowers on conical hats.

"When we heard visitors were coming back, I was just so excited," said duty manager Ngo Thi Bich Thuong.

Before the pandemic in 2019, around 5 million people, including half a million foreigners - mostly from China, South Korea, Japan and Russia - holidayed on Phu Quoc.

Vingroup - the enormously powerful conglomerate behind the new complex - is pushing to make the island "a new international destination on the world tourist map".

To cater for the tourist boom, 40,000 hotel rooms have been built and planned, vice chairman of the Vietnam Tourism Advisory Board Ken Atkinson told AFP - "that's more hotel keys than they have in Sydney, Australia".

Globally popular vacation spots such as Thailand's Phuket have given Vietnam something to aim for.

Atkinson took a group of senior Vietnamese government officials there in 2005 - but while Phuket's vibrant international tourist scene took years to build up, "Vietnam has a tendency of wanting to do everything all at once", he noted.

"Unfortunately I don't think there was enough attention given to what would be in the long-term benefit of the island," he added.

Phu Quoc is a UNESCO biosphere reserve - surrounding waters are stuffed with coral reefs, and its beaches were once nesting spots for hawksbill and green turtles.

But no nesting has taken place in recent years, the United Nations body said in their last assessment in 2018.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has warned of "an almost unimaginable flood of plastic" that chokes rivers, canals and sea life.

Around 160 tonnes of trash - almost enough to fill 16 trucks - is generated every day, according to WWF, which says that the island's waste management is not fit to cope with the tourism explosion.

"More and more tourists are very conscious of the environment. They don't want to be going to places where beaches are littered or where effluent is going into the sea," Atkinson warned.

But alongside the trash, and the garish headline attractions - including the world's longest non-stop three-rope cable car and Vietnam's first teddy bear museum - there are still pockets of paradise.

Chu Dinh Duc, 26, from mainland Vietnam, first saw Phu Quoc from the back of a motorbike in 2017.

Speeding through dense forests and winding his way to the few remaining sleepy villages where fishermen cast their nets into the ocean as the sun came up, he fell in love.

Two years later, he opened a simple homestay business catering to foreigners.

"My goal here is not to take a lot of their money," he said. "But I want as many as possible to come."

"If Phu Quoc remained undeveloped, it would just be a pearl undiscovered."//CNA

Protesters took over the street in Australia on Vaccine jab - 

Several thousand people took to Australia's streets on Saturday (Nov 20) protesting COVID-19 vaccination mandates, while smaller crowds gathered to support the measures that have elevated the country to be one of the most inoculated in the world.

Nearly 85 per cent of Australians aged 16 and above have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as of Nov 19.

While nationwide vaccinations are voluntary, states and territories have mandated vaccinations for many occupations and barred the unvaccinated from activities such as dining out and concerts.

Chanting "Freedom, freedom" and carrying "End Segregation Now" signs, several thousand anti-vaccination protesters marched through Melbourne's downtown, Australia's second-most populous city that was hit the hardest by the pandemic.

Protesters gathered also in Sydney, Brisbane and other cities, with no immediate reports of unruly behaviour.

A banner in Sydney read, "My life is not a gift from the government, it is a gift from God," according to The Age newspaper.

The anti-vaccination rallies have continued for weeks in Australia, becoming occasionally violent and attracting lose groups of regular citizens, as well as far-right and conspiracy theory supporters.

The anti-vaccination movement, however, remains small, with polls showing nationwide opposition in the single digits.

A counter-rally of several hundred took place in Melbourne, organised by the Campaign Against Racism & Fascism group under the slogan of "Don't scab, get the jab".

The chief of the Australia Open tournament, the year's first Grand Slam tennis tournament and one of Australia's biggest sporting events, said on Saturday, that all players will have to be vaccinated to compete in January in Melbourne.

On Saturday, there were 1,166 new COVID-19 infections in the state of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital.

Five more people died. The most populous state of New South Wales, where nearly 92 per cent of people are fully vaccinated, reported 182 new cases.

Despite the Delta outbreaks that led to months of lockdown in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia has had only about 760 confirmed cases and 7.5 deaths per 100,000 people, according to data from the World Health Organisation, far lower than many other developed nations.

The United Kingdom, for example, has had more than 14,000 confirmed cases and 211 deaths per 100,000 people.

Neighbouring New Zealand, which is also learning to live with the coronavirus through high vaccination rates, reported 172 new cases.

As of Friday, 83 per cent of the Pacific nation's population have been fully vaccinated//CNA

File photo of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. (Photo: Reuters/Eloisa Lopez) - 

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has suspended a probe at Manila's request into suspected rights abuses during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's crackdown on drugs.

ICC judges approved a probe in September into the campaign in which thousands of suspected drug peddlers have died. Activists say many have been executed by law enforcement agencies with the tacit backing of the president.

Philippine authorities say the killings were in self-defence and that the ICC has no right to meddle.

Court documents released by the ICC and confirmed by Philippine officials on Saturday (Nov 20) showed that Manila filed the deferral request on Nov 10, citing the country's own investigations into drug war killings.

"The prosecution has temporarily suspended its investigative activities while it assesses the scope and effect of the deferral request," ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan wrote, adding that it would seek additional information from the Philippines.

Governments can ask the ICC to defer a case if they are implementing their own investigations and prosecutions for the same acts.

Duterte, 76, pulled the Philippines out of the ICC in 2018 and has said the international court has no jurisdiction to indict him.

The ICC maintains it has jurisdiction to investigate crimes committed while Manila was a member and up until 2019.

The Manila request for the deferral follows repeated statements by the Duterte government that it would not cooperate with the ICC.

"We welcome the judiciousness of the new ICC prosecutor who has deemed it fit to give the matter a fresh look, and we trust that the matter will be resolved in favour of the exoneration of our government and the recognition of the vibrancy of our justice system," Karlo Nograles, acting spokesperson for Duterte, said in a statement on Saturday. 

A Philippine lawyers group called on the ICC not to remove the glimmer of hope for families of drug-war victims.

"We ask the ICC not to allow itself to be swayed by the claims now being made by the Duterte administration," the National Union of People's Lawyers, which represents some victims' families, said in a statement.

The Philippine justice system is "extremely slow and unavailing to the majority of poor and unrepresented victims", it said.

Human Rights Watch said the government's claim that existing domestic mechanisms afford citizens justice was absurd.

"Let's hope the ICC sees through the ruse that it is," Brad Adam, its Asia director, said in a statement.

The ICC decision is a boost for Duterte, who this week launched a run for the Senate in elections next year. He is barred by the constitution from seeking re-election as president.

"It will of course provide some relief in the raucous elections," political analyst Ramon Casiple, vice president of consulting and research firm Novo Trends PH, told Reuters.

"However, it may not enable (him) to do more after the elections, particularly if the incoming government chooses to cooperate with the ICC process."

In its nearly two-decade existence, the ICC has convicted five men for war crimes and crimes against humanity, all African militia leaders from Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Uganda//CNA

The interval for COVID-19 booster jabs will be standardised to be administered five months after the completion of two doses of vaccine. (Photo: Jalelah Abu Baker) - 

Eligible individuals will be able to receive their COVID-19 booster jabs five months after completing their second dose, instead of six months. 

"It is evident that waning of antibodies can clearly occur by around six months after the second dose and occur earlier for older groups," the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Saturday (Nov 20). 

The expert committee on COVID-19 vaccination therefore recommends that the interval for booster jabs be standardised to five months for all eligible age groups. 

"This would be an appropriate interval to pre-empt waning of antibodies for all," said MOH.

The change will take effect on Nov 24.

Currently, the Health Ministry is administering booster shots six months after the second dose for people aged 30 to 59, and five months for those aged 60 and above. 

There is an emerging view among the global clinical and scientific communities that COVID-19 vaccination against the Delta variant is “really a three-dose vaccine, like (for) Hepatitis B”, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung at a COVID-19 multi-ministry task force press conference on Saturday.

From now until the end of December, the Government hopes to administer about 1.5 million booster shots, Mr Ong said.

This will raise Singapore's booster vaccination coverage from 21 per cent to 50 per cent, he added.

"This means by year-end, half of our population will be freshly boosted with high levels of antibodies," he told reporters.

In its press release, MOH said booster vaccination “significantly increases” protection against infection and severe disease, as well as prevents waning of vaccine protection.

“We encourage everyone eligible for the booster vaccination to receive it when it is offered to them, so as to achieve high levels of protection,” it added.

Those who are eligible for booster shots but have not received their SMS invitations may walk into any Moderna vaccination centre to receive the jab, without needing to book an appointment//CNA