The announcement that fully vaccinated Singapore residents can travel to Germany and back without having to serve a stay-home notice from Sept 8 will be welcome news to many here who have been travel-starved. This will be the first time residents can go for quarantine-free leisure travel since Singapore tightened border controls in March last year. The development is part of a broader plan for vaccination-differentiated border measures in which Singapore will unilaterally open its borders to vaccinated travellers from selected countries, starting with Germany and Brunei. Singapore is classifying countries and regions into four categories, with differentiated measures for each category, depending on how much of a Covid-19 transmission risk they pose. The hope, of course, is for an increase in the number of countries residents here can travel to and return from without being quarantined.

The calibrated approach reflects another attempt to enable Singapore to be as open as possible without allowing imported infections to undermine the progress made in keeping the coronavirus pandemic in check. The International Air Transport Association has been quick to welcome Singapore's easing of some restrictions for inbound travellers. It noted that it has been some 18 months since much of the world closed borders to international travel. Given that a lot more is known about Covid-19 now than when it first appeared, and given increased vaccination rates, it would not do for nations to adopt a risk-averse, zero-Covid-19 outlook. Instead, a data-driven approach using vaccination, tracing and testing can manage the spread of Covid-19 when reopening borders to international travel.