Singapore: no more quarantine for vaccinated travelers from France and other countries
The Singaporean authorities have decided to stop quarantine for travelers from 8 new countries including France as of Tuesday, October 19, 2021. © Roslan RAHMAN / AFP
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Fully vaccinated travelers from eight new countries, including France, will be able to travel to Singapore without having to undergo a quarantine, starting Tuesday, October 19.
The city-state now intends to live with the coronavirus.
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For months, Singapore adopted a “
zero Covid
”
strategy
by closing its borders, carrying out an intense tracing policy and imposing a containment of the population according to the evolution of the epidemic.
More than 80% of the inhabitants of the age of being being being now fully vaccinated, the authorities of this rich international financial and commercial center wish to revive the economy.
The end of "
zero Covid
"
In September, the city-state opened a travel corridor for vaccinated passengers from Brunei and Germany. As of Tuesday, October 19, eight other countries - Great Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States - will be affected. On November 15, South Korea will join this list.
“
Singapore cannot remain isolated and closed indefinitely.
It would not work and the cost would be too high,
”Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on October 9, the day he announced the measures that will accompany the new“
Living with Covid-19
”
strategy
.
He explained that the appearance of the Delta variant, which is
much more contagious
, was a determining factor because "
even if the whole population is vaccinated, we will not be able to eradicate it
".
"
Almost all countries have accepted this reality
", underlined the Prime Minister.
Economic revival
The city-state is the regional headquarters of thousands of multinationals, in particular because of its airport, which is an international hub.
“
We must continue to securely reopen our borders,
” Lee said.
“
Businesses and investors need to operate regionally and globally from Singapore.
The people who work for them need to travel for a living.
"
"
We hope that the measures taken by Singapore will inspire other markets to follow the same path to revive air transport,
" said Philip Goh, vice president for Asia-Pacific of the International Air Transport Association (Iata ).
Singapore, which has 5.45 million inhabitants, has recorded more than 3,000 new daily infections in recent days, most of them benign or asymptomatic.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 148,000 local cases have been identified and the Covid-19 has killed 233.
►Also read: Covid-19: Australia announces the imminent reopening of its borders after 18 months of closure
(with AFP)
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