While we've been watching and waiting for U.S. travel restrictions to catch up with most of the rest of the world - with it taking one step closer this week to dropping its foreign air arrival vaccine mandate, as Open Jaw reported 09FEB, with the House voting in favour of a measure to repeal the rule - it's been easy to lose track of what other COVID measures are still out there in the world for travellers.
Skift reports that, effective 13FEB, Singapore is moving "to the next stage of reopening" by dropping more rules for travellers to the southeast Asian city-state.
In APR 2022, the Asian financial hub re-opened to international events, tourism and business travel, lifting many - but not all - of its COVID travel restrictions.
Now come further steps. The government will no longer require unvaccinated arrivals to provide a negative COVID test or buy COVID travel insurance. It's also dropping mandatory masking (in all but healthcare scenarios), and contact-tracing apps.
“Within Singapore our COVID situation has remained stable over the recent months, despite increased travel over the year-end holidays and China’s shift from zero COVID,” Lawrence Wong, deputy prime minister and co-chair of Singapore's COVID-19 taskforce, told media in a briefing.
Singapore says it expects its tourism industry to rebound to pre-pandemic levels by next year.