Situation at home the first priority

Minister: travel relaxation depends on virus spread

THE country’s first priority is to control the Covid-19 pandemic at home and ensure healthcare system is not overwhelmed, Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said.

“The issue of relaxation of travel curbs with Asean is being actively discussed,” he said on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

“For a start, we’ve got to settle mutual recognition of health certificates, vaccine certificates, that’s in a sense making sure our digital systems, our ability to verify records, are in place,” he said.

“The second step is to actually decide when and how we can actually liberalise and allow travel. This is a much more difficult point, because even in the case of Singapore, these decisions whether

“Right now is the time to be careful.” Vivian balakrishnan

to open or tighten depend very much on the domestic situation at that point in time.

“Right now is the time to be careful,” added Vivian.

He said the Singapore government has had to introduce more measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus in the country, to not overload its medical facilities.

“We are not out of the woods yet”, both in Singapore and globally, he added.