Singapore allows Australia and Switzerland travellers to enter without quarantine in another reopening step

The new travel lanes, which begin on November 8, will increase the quota of vaccinated travellers entering the city state from 3,000 to 4,000 daily
Singapore officials say they are working to establish more agreements, including with neighbouring Malaysia

Coronavirus pandemic

Kok Xinghuiin Singapore

Published: 5:24pm, 26 Oct 2021

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Singapore borders will in two weeks reopen to vaccinated travellers from Australia and Switzerland, who will not have to undergo quarantine, authorities said on Tuesday.

The new arrangement is on top of the 11 vaccinated travel lanes the city state has already announced, including to Britain, South Korea and the United States.

The move comes as Singapore pledges to commit to a “living with Covid” strategy to restart the economy after months of movement restrictions, even as it battles an ongoing rise in Delta variant cases. While the vast majority of infected people are asymptomatic or mildly ill, the number of seriously-ill patients has risen to such an extent that 83.6 per cent of the 366 intensive care beds in public hospitals are full. Of the 306 beds that are taken, 171 patients are being treated for Covid-19.

The travel lanes with Australia and Switzerland will begin on November 8. While Switzerland allows vaccinated travellers to enter without quarantine, Australia still does not allow tourists to enter.

Australia’s borders currently are only open to citizens, permanent residents and their immediate families, although Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was working to allow students and business travellers from Singapore to enter Australia before opening up to tourists from the city state.

02:07

Singapore adds 8 more countries to quarantine-free list for vaccinated travellers

More than 50,000 Singaporeans live in Australia and over 25,000 Australians live in Singapore, while there are about 3,000 Swiss expatriates living in Singapore.

The addition of these travel lanes will raise Singapore’s quota of vaccinated travellers entering the country from 3,000 to 4,000 daily.

In announcing the new lanes, Transport Minister S Iswaran said it was still a fraction of the countries that Singapore’s Changi Airport was connected with before the Covid-19 pandemic shut the city state’s borders in March last year.

“To rebuild our aviation hub, we will need to steadily restore safe quarantine-free travel with more countries and regions,” said the minister, who added that the government was holding discussions with more countries.

Singapore leads the way as air travel in Asia picks up pace

Travellers entering Singapore must be on designated vaccinated flights, and they must take two Covid-19 PCR tests: one within 48 hours before their flight to Singapore, and the other on arrival at Changi Airport.

So far, Singapore has had five imported Covid-19 cases from the travel lanes. There have been 290 visitors from Brunei Darussalam and 6,226 from Germany since the city state started quarantine-free travel with those places on September 8, while as of Monday, 8,583 travellers from eight other travel lanes were approved for travel to Singapore between October 19 and November 30.

Malaysia, which used to see 300,000 people travel to Singapore each day, has said multiple times that it is trying to establish travel arrangements with its neighbour.

Just yesterday, Malaysian health minister Khairy Jamaluddin said he met his Singaporean counterpart Ong Ye Kung and that “both sides are working to finalise more open and convenient travel arrangements”.

When asked about such arrangements with Asian neighbours, Iswaran said discussions were ongoing and that authorities were “working through the details, and we should be able to make announcements … once we’ve worked out the specifics”.