Singapore to open travel corridors with US, UK, six other ‘living with Covid’ nations
- In major easing of travel restrictions, Singapore will open travel corridors with the US, UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Canada and Denmark
- Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in televised speech predicts current record wave of cases will take up to six months to stabilise
Singapore and eight Western nations including the United States and Britain will soon open quarantine-free travel lanes for vaccinated travellers, authorities said on Saturday, marking the country’s most extensive easing of travel restrictions since borders were shut last March.
Canada, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Denmark will also open “vaccinated travel lanes” with the island nation. These lanes will begin operations starting October 19.
The new travel corridors were unveiled as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a televised address that Singapore, a vaccine pacesetter, would press on with its “living with Covid-19” plan even amid a surge that has caused record daily caseloads and a spike in deaths.
Lee said it would take Singapore “at least three months, and perhaps as long as six months” to get the relatively restriction-free state that much of Europe and the West was currently enjoying.
The prime minister underscored that countries that prematurely lifted restrictions had “paid for it dearly, losing many lives along the way”.
Still, he said the country could not “stay locked down and closed off indefinitely”, and acknowledged that business disruptions, job losses and the separation of families across borders had caused “psychological and emotional strain and mental fatigue”.
