Travellers Heading to S’pore Will Need to Show Negative PCR Results That Was Taken Within 48 Hours

These days, if you want to do almost anything, you’ll first need to have a long cotton swab shoved up your nose.

Going for a wedding reception? Here’s a swab.

Unvaccinated and working in high-risk industries? Here’s a swab.

Travelling? Here are about 15 swabs. 

This is the right way to go about it, of course. The more tests we do, the quicker we can isolate infections and prevent them from spreading further.

To reduce the risk of imported cases, many countries including Singapore have made it mandatory for travellers to present negative COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test results before flying.

Travellers had to take this test 72 hours before departure, but now, it’ll be a little later than that.

Travellers Heading to S’pore Will Need to Show Negative PCR Results That Was Taken Within 48 Hours

Travellers from multiple countries will soon face stricter pre-departure requirements if they’re planning to enter or transit through Singapore.

From 11.59pm on Thursday (9 Sep) travellers will have to produce a negative COVID-19 PCR test result taken within 48 hours before departure, if their country falls under Category II, III, and IV.

These are the categories:

Category I: Hong Kong, Macao, Mainland China, and Taiwan

Category II: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea

Category III: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and Switzerland

Category IV: All other countries and regions

Previously, the test had to be taken 72 hours before departure, and only applied to countries from Category III and IV.

What Do the Different Categories Mean?

As you would have expected, countries are ranked according to how high a risk they pose of COVID-19 infection.

Category I, for example, has countries with the lowest risk of Covid-19 transmission.

Category II comprises countries with similar COVID-19 risk profiles to Singapore.

Category III has countries with a higher risk of COVID-19 infections.

Category IV countries are deemed to have the highest risk of COVID-19 infection.

There has been some reshuffling lately, due to the ever-changing global COVID-19 situation.

South Korea, previously in Category III, has now been bumped up to Category II.

This means that travellers from South Korea will now be subjected to the following requirements:

• a pre-departure test
• a test on arrival
• a seven-day stay home notice (SHN) at their place of residence
• a PCR test at the end of their SHN

Typically, travellers from Category III countries would need to serve their 14-day SHN at dedicated facilities.

However, if they are fully vaccinated, they may opt out of it and serve it at their place of residence instead.

Head here for more information.

Read Also: 

• Bus Interchange Clusters & CGH Cluster Continue to Grow; S’pore Now Has 55 Active Clusters
• A Neighbour’s Incense Burning on a Cardboard Allegedly Caused a Fire in an HDB Corridor

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