Ministry of Health and Medical Services permanent secretary Dr James Fong says they had ensured that the default quarantine period for all travellers from non-travel partner countries is 14 days.
He said in some countries where they had managed to secure oversight over the escalated pre-departure conditions, the ministry had reduced the quarantine period to 10 days.
“I need to be clear that this escalated program is to reduce the risk of community transmission of an unknown variant,” Dr Fong said.
“The temporary removal of any country from our travel partner country list is already an ongoing assessment process.
“However, we have noted that a number of our travel partner countries now have widespread community transmission of Omicron. Therefore, we are adding to our current border entry requirements for travel partner countries with evidence of community transmission of Omicron by strengthening the pre-departure testing requirement.”
Dr Fong said this would entail reducing the time for when the test could be taken from at most 72 hours before departure to 24 hours.
He said this had already been put in place for travellers from the United States of America and the United Kingdom.
“We are currently working on how this can also be done for travellers from other travel partner countries.
“At the same time, we recognise that the three-day hotel stay and testing for arrivals from travel partner countries will not completely prevent cases from entering the community, including the Omicron variant.
“As Omicron is now widespread across the world, including in a number of our travel partner countries, it is very likely that it will also enter our community.
“The strongest evidence so far is that it transmits better and faster than other variants; people that have been infected with COVID-19 before are getting re-infected with Omicron, and people who have received two doses of a vaccine can also get infected.
“However, it is still too early to determine whether Omicron causes more or less severe disease, though international experts do expect that prior immunity (including from vaccination) will reduce the risk of severe disease.”
