Singapore: No more quarantine for travelers from some countries, including Canada

Singapore, Singapore | Fully vaccinated travelers from eight countries will, from Tuesday, be able to travel to Singapore without having to undergo quarantine, as the city-state now plans to live with the coronavirus.

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For several months, Singapore has adopted a “zero Covid” strategy by closing its borders and implementing an extensive tracing policy and enforcing population containment according to the evolution of the epidemic.

More than 80% of the population of the age is now fully vaccinated, the authorities of this rich international financial and trade center want to revive the economy.

In September, the city state opened a travel corridor for vaccinated passengers from Brunei and Germany.

From Tuesday, eight other countries will be affected (Great Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States). On November 15, South Korea will join this list.

“Singapore cannot remain isolated and closed indefinitely. It will not work and the cost will be too high,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on October 9, when he announced the measures that will accompany the new ‘Coexist with COVID-19’ strategy.

He explained that the emergence of the delta variant, which is much more contagious, was a decisive factor, because “even if the entire population were vaccinated, we would not be able to eradicate it.”

“Almost all countries have accepted this reality,” the prime minister said.

The city-state is the regional headquarters of thousands of multinational companies, particularly because of its airport, which is an international hub.

“We must continue to safely reopen our borders,” he told me. Companies and investors have to operate regionally and globally from Singapore. The people who work for them need to travel for a living. ”

“We hope that the actions taken by Singapore will inspire other markets to follow the same path to revive air transport,” said Philip Goh, Vice President of the Asia Pacific region at the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

Singapore, with a population of 5.45 million, has recorded more than 3,000 new daily infections in recent days, most of them benign or asymptomatic.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 148,000 local cases have been identified and COVID-19 has killed 233.

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