Rising vaccination rates across Singapore has allowed the city-state to further relax border restrictions, with the latest being an immediate removal of quarantine for travellers from Hong Kong and Macau as well as the launch of all-purpose Vaccinated Travel Lanes (VTL) with Germany and Brunei from September 8.
Under the new VTL scheme, announced by the Singapore Covid-19 multi-ministry task force on August 19, fully vaccinated travellers departing from Germany or Brunei may enter Singapore without having to serve Stay-Home Notice, otherwise known as a compulsory quarantine. Instead, these travellers must take several Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests, including a pre-departure test within 48 hours of the departure flight, an on-arrival test at Changi Airport, and post-arrival tests at designated clinics in Singapore on their third and seventh day of travel.
Travellers do not need to follow a controlled itinerary or have a sponsor, but they must have remained in Singapore or their country of departure – Germany or Brunei – in the last 21 consecutive days before they depart for Singapore.
They must also travel on direct and designated VTL flights from their country of departure to Singapore, which will serve only VTL travellers, said the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore in a press release.
The designated flights from Germany will be operated by Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa, while the flights from Brunei will be run by Singapore Airlines and Royal Brunei Airlines.
According to a CNA report, there will be one daily VTL flight from Frankfurt or Munich, and three flights a week from Brunei.
Travel insurance with a minimum coverage of S$30,000 (US$22,007) for Covid-19-related medical treatment and hospitalisation costs must be purchased ahead of their trip to Singapore.
Travellers will also need to download and use the TraceTogether app in Singapore to enable contact tracing.
At the press conference, transport minister S Iswaran explained that Germany and Brunei were chosen to kick off the new scheme based on overall risk and operational assessment.
The VTL implementation would come with safeguards in place, and Singapore would draw lessons from the experience and enhance processes before any further expansion of the scheme.
Furthermore, fully vaccinated travellers to Singapore will, from August 20, be eligible for vaccination-differentiated safe management measures in Singapore. The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority will issue tamper-proof stickers to arrivals who have been fully inoculated with a vaccine under the WHO EUL – such as Pfizer-BioNTech/Comirnaty, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm, Sinovac and Covishield vaccines.
Previously, only Singapore citizens, permanent residents and long-term pass holders with vaccination records in the National Immunisation Registry were eligible for vaccination-differentiated safe management measures. Current vaccination-differentiated safe management measures include allowing fully vaccinated individuals to dine at restaurants without having to undergo pre-event testing and to dine in groups of up to five fully vaccinated people.
