Australia doesn’t qualify in the latter category yet but Singapore has already been letting in Australians for months without having to quarantine. Australians only have to isolate until they test negative.
“We were fully prepared to have a travel bubble with Australia without quarantine even before there were vaccines,” Lim said.
“So if the numbers remain very low,the only thing that has changed is there are a heck of a lot more Singaporeans vaccinated,which is a good thing. I don’t see why Singapore should be concerned about Australia and vice versa.”
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with Singaporean PM Lee Hsien Loong in 2019.Credit:AP
Singapore has a 21-day hotel quarantine period in place at the moment for arrivals from most countries but as the vaccination process evolves -school students aged 12 and up are able to be get the jab from this month’s school holidays - the goalposts are likely to move.
Lim sees Singapore as a candidate for countries that are at high risk but not out of control,including those where vaccination rates haven’t crossed thresholds for herd immunity.
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“I suspect Singapore would be very willing to figure out how to have fully vaccinated people able to travel to Singapore and have some sort of shortened quarantine,” Lim said.
It should be able to catch cases either at the border or very early on,given the very aggressive testing regime the Lee government is proposing,he said.
The only barrier to Singapore opening up to nations with high vaccine rates,he said,would be if it could not secure enough vaccines for most of the population or if case numbers surged during the northern summer in the United States,Britain and Europe.
In a national address on television and online this week,Lee said his country had to be ready to “carry on with our lives even with a virus in our midst”.
“Living with an endemic COVID-19 also means we don’t completely close our borders,” he said. “We need food,essential supplies,workers,business and other travellers to keep on flowing.
“We will not be able to prevent some infected persons from slipping through from time to time but as long as our population is sufficiently vaccinated we should be able to trace,isolate and treat the cases that pop up.
“We must stay connected to the world.”
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