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Singapore to allow in vaccinated Indonesians
Government ‘still studying’ travel lane arrangement
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ingapore will allow vaccinated Indonesians to visit without quarantining later this month in a nonreciprocal move that sees the city-state eager to reopen its borders.
However, having enjoyed a relatively calm COVID-19 situation over the past month after experiencing the worst wave of infections between June and August, Indonesian officials say it was still studying the arrangement.
The country reported just 221 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, compared to Singapore’s 2,000-plus cases.
In a statement published on Monday, the Singaporean Embassy in Jakarta announced that the city-state was launching a vaccinated travel lane (VTL) with Indonesia from Nov. 29, though it will only apply to travelers leaving from Jakarta. Travelers from Singapore wanting to visit Indonesia will still need to follow existing travel regulations, which include a three-day mandatory quarantine period for inoculated travelers.
Meanwhile, travelers from Jakarta must be fully vaccinated with vaccines listed in the World Health Organization’s emergency use listing, which include Sinovac vaccines, the ones most commonly used in Indonesia. Around 78 percent of the country’s vaccines were supplied by the Chinese biopharmaceutical company.
The announcement was published ahead of a bilateral meeting between Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi and Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan in Singapore on Tuesday, during which they discussed how the two countries would set up safe and travel arrangements, including through the VTL arrangement.
According to Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry, both sides were still in discussions on how to open the travel lane reciprocally, given that the recently announced VTL was granted by the city-state unilaterally.
“[Balakrishnan] said Singapore's unilateral VTL implementation was based on, among other things, trust in the system, the continued improvement in the COVID-19 situation in Indonesia and its higher vaccination rate,” Retno said in a statement.
The meeting was primarily convened to discuss plans for the annual retreat between President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
The two leaders last met in Singapore in 2019. As is customary, the location of the retreat alternates between the two countries every year.
Retno said the two sides would also continue to discuss the creation of a “safety bubble”, tailored especially for ferry travel from Singapore to Bintan in the Riau Islands.
The latest announcement had the effect of turning the tables on the ministers’ previous meeting in March, during which the Indonesian side appeared to be more eager to open a travel bubble arrangement with Singapore, with an eye toward having the next leaders’ retreat held in Bintan.
Beginning Nov. 12, Singapore’s Health Ministry updated Indonesia’s country status to Category II in a system that aligns the city-state’s border measures with the pandemic conditions of other countries. Under this category and outside of VTL arrangements, Indonesian travelers must produce results from an antigen or polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test and self-quarantine for seven days.
Singapore Transport Minister S. Iswaran said that while Indonesia was still closed for general travel, the country had gradually reopened its borders to allow visitors from 19 countries.
“We hope that Indonesia will likewise soon reopen its borders to travelers from Singapore,” he said recently as quoted by Channel News Asia.
Meanwhile, Coordinating Economic Affairs Minister Airlangga Hartanto said Indonesia was still studying the possibility of reopening its borders to several Southeast Asian countries based on their COVID-19 situation.
He said the government would need to scrutinize the pandemic situation in each country before signing any travel agreement, as it was still wary over the recent discovery of a new subtype of the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus, which was found in neighboring Malaysia and Singapore.
“We are still studying [the possibilities for] vaccinated travel lanes, but the government still needs to monitor case levels in several countries,” he said in a video statement live-streamed on YouTube.
As a point of comparison, Airlangga said Indonesia currently had just one COVID-19 case for every 100,000 citizens, as opposed to Singapore with 454, Malaysia with 127, Thailand with 89 and Australia with 51.
