Singapore will remove most remaining Covid-19 restrictions from tomorrow, April 26, including droppping its requirement for a pre-travel test from vaccinated travellers.
The city-state’s ministry of health confirmed the move on Friday, saying the easing of its formerly tight travel restrictions had been informed by a decline in new daily infections.
From Tuesday onwards, vaccinated travellers will no longer have to take a professionally administered PCR or antigen test in the two days before their journey – previously, everyone over the age of two had to do so.
Unvaccinated travellers aged 13 and over remain banned from travel to Singapore, while those aged 12 and under can visit unvaccinated when accompanied by a vaccinated adult.
“With these changes, we can now have a well deserved breather, after two very difficult years of fighting the virus,” said Lawrence Wong, co-chair of the government’s coronavirus taskforce.
“Starting 26 April, vaccinated travellers no longer need to take pre-departure tests before entering Singapore. Singapore residents planning to travel abroad are urged to track the Covid-19 situation in the countries they will be visiting,” posted the country’s Civil Aviation Authority on Twitter.
Singapore’s definition of “fully vaccinated” is someone who has had two doses of any vaccine on the WHO Emergency Use Listing (EUL), with two weeks having elapsed since their second dose.
Its authorities had already scrapped quarantine for fully vaccinated arrivals on 1 April.
Covid rules and guidelines will ease on the ground, too: Singapore’s Disease Outbreak Response System Condition alert level will shift from orange to yellow, limits of 10 people for small group gatherings and 100 for large events will end, social distancing guidelines will be scrapped, and most venues will no longer require visitors to check in on the TraceTogether tracking app.
At a press conference on Friday, health minister Ong Ye Kung said that, “on the whole, things continue to look up for us”.
“Our social resilience is strong and now we are in a comfortable position. We can therefore afford to take further steps to restore pre-Covid-19 normalcy.”
Face masks will still be required in indoor settings including public transport, while they remain optional (but advised) in crowded outdoor settings.
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