Health Minister Ong Ye Kung on Monday characterised Singapore’s border control stance as somewhere between stringent and liberal, as he laid out the country’s response to the global COVID-19 situation.
Mr Ong explained that Singapore will not impose pre-departure tests on travellers from China as severe cases can originate from anywhere.
Putting up such requirements, he said, raises the question of travellers from other regions that contribute more infections and severe cases.
“By triggering PDT (pre-departure test requirements) on travellers from one part of the world experiencing high infection numbers, are we contributing to an international precedent of imposing tests on travellers from countries going through an infection wave? How will other countries treat travellers from Singapore when we encounter another infection wave?”
On Sunday, China lifted all border controls and pandemic curbs on Sunday, ending three years of a strict zero-COVID policy. This included scrapping quarantine requirements for international arrivals, and reopening sea and land crossings with Hong Kong.
Chinese authorities said previously that outbound travel for citizens will also be resumed in an “orderly” manner.
Despite China’s big infection wave, Mr Ong said travellers from the country only accounted for a small percentage of imported COVID-19 cases in Singapore.
In the four weeks leading up to Jan 1, he said Singapore had detected about 200 COVID-positive travellers from China, accounting for less than 5 per cent of total imported infections and one out of seven severe cases.
There have also been no severe infection cases coming from China since Jan 1.
He attributed the low number of imported infections to low travel volumes between Singapore and China, high vaccination rates and Singapore’s current measures – including maintaining a test requirement for travellers who are not fully vaccinated.
Currently, Singapore runs 38 weekly flights from China, receiving between 700 and 1,000 arrivals every day. This is less than 10 per cent pre-pandemic, when the country ran around 400 weekly flights from China, he said.
“We do not discriminate because severe cases can originate from any country, any region in the world, as shown by our data,” he said.
Sharing new statistics, he said that imported infections accounted for about 5 per cent to 10 per cent of total infections detected in Singapore. The bulk of imported infections came from ASEAN countries (more than 50 per cent), followed by the rest of Asia (around 15 per cent), Europe (11 per cent) and the Middle East (9 per cent).
