Singapore plans to allow vaccinated visitors from all countries to skip quarantine upon arrival, once the Omicron wave has passed, officials announced this week.
Ong Ye Kung, Singapore’s Health Minister, said that while travel restrictions were intended to prevent infections from entering the country, they accounted only for 1% of daily cases and no longer had a material impact on the country’s Covid situation.
He said that in the future, the focus would be on whether visitors to Singapore were at risk of becoming seriously ill and putting a strain on the healthcare system.
‘We should actually emphasize less on SHN [Stay Home Notices] and tests on travellers, [and] more on ensuring that they are fully vaccinated and boosted,’ he said.
‘Instead of having vaccinated travel lanes or VTLs with selected countries that we think are low risk,’ Ong said, ‘we should actually allow SHN-free travel for … fully vaccinated travellers from all countries.
‘We should make this transition not now, but after the Omicron wave has peaked and starts to subside,’ he added.
[Image: https://pixabay.com/photos/singapore-marina-bay-helix-2696704/]