From Tuesday (21 Dec), Singaporeans who are fully vaccinated can fly to Sydney and Melbourne without having to serve the three day quarantine.

This restores a previous two-way quarantine free travel between Singapore and parts of Australia, having gone through a suspension of three weeks.

All forms of travel are allowed including tourism, as part of Australia’s travel pilot for fully vaccinated Singaporeans.

Including non-Singaporeans, those who are eligible can then return to Singapore under the Vaccinated Travel Lane scheme, which does not include the need for a quarantine.

Streamlining processes

The lifting of the requirement for the three-day quarantine after arrival is part of the New South Wales and Victorian states plan to streamline the processes.

This is because under the new updated rules, the fully vaccinated entering the states are required to get a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test upon 24 hours of arrival, including isolation till their results shows up negative.

With the option to pay for a PCR test in Australia which returns results in less than an hour, it will defeat the purpose of a three day quarantine.

Travellers must also test negative from a PCR test three days prior to boarding their flights.

Any travellers who are not considered fully vaccinated and are above 18 y.o will have to serve a mandatory 14 days hotel quarantine.

High vaccination rates

Both states in Australia under the pilot program have already had more than 90 percent of the population who are above the age of 16 vaccinated.

Singaporeans who are eligible can therefore enter the participating states in the country without having to serve any quarantine without the need to seek exemptions.

To limit the number of eligible travellers, the Australian authorities opened this pilot program only to vaccinated Singapore citizens.

This will also allow them to put border measures up to the test before they further open up to other non-citizens.

The program first started on 21 Nov, but came to a halt on 28 Nov as a response to the Omicron variant emerging.

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