The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore announced on Thursday that the city-state is easing somewhat its inbound-visitor restrictions for travellers, in respect to people from mainland China and from the Australian state of Victoria. This was on the basis those two jurisdictions were deemed to present “low” risk of causing “importation” to Singapore of Covid-19.
A number of investment analysts has said that curbs on inbound travel to Singapore amid the Covid-19 pandemic, have been a constraint on business recovery for Singapore’s two casino resorts.
According to Thursday’s announcement, with effect from Friday (October 30) those from mainland China and those people travelling from Victoria, can respectively apply for Singapore’s “Air Travel Pass”, in order to come to the city-state via flights on or after November 6.
A condition of getting the pass is that applicants have not been outside either mainland China or Australia “in the last 14 consecutive days prior to their entry into Singapore,” said the aviation authority.
Such travellers will be exempted from Singapore’s so-called “stay-home notice” – a quarantine requirement that restricts people from leaving their places of residence at all times for 14 days – as long as they are proven to be negative for Covid-19 infection on the basis of a test to be conducted upon arrival at Singapore’s Changi Airport.
Singapore had already eased border restrictions for travellers from other parts of Australia, and from Brunei Darussalem, New Zealand and Vietnam. As of Thursday, Singapore had received only 602 visitors from those countries since such easing measures. None of the cohort of visitors had tested positive for Covid-19 on arrival in Singapore, the civil aviation authority noted.
Mainland China business people, or officials from that jurisdiction that were sponsored by “government agencies”, had been allowed to apply for inbound travel to Singapore – under certain conditions – from June 8.
Singapore plans a “travel bubble” with Hong Kong. Under it, residents of the respective places would be able to engage in leisure travel between the two places, quarantine-free. Conditions included that each individual had a valid test certificate showing freedom from Covid-19 infection. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, said on Tuesday that the city hoped to see the travel bubble arrangement with Singapore launched during November.
