SINGAPORE – The stay-home notice (SHN) period for travellers from higher-risk countries or regions will be lengthened to 21 days, up from 14 days, said Mr Lawrence Wong, Minister for Education and co-chair of the multi-ministry task force handling Covid-19, on Tuesday (May 4).

The extended SHN will apply to travellers arriving from all countries and regions except for Australia, Brunei, mainland China, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau from Friday (May 7) at 11.59pm. They will be required to serve their 21-day SHN at dedicated facilities.

In addition, the period of recent travel history being assessed for border measures will also be increased to 21 days from 14. This excludes bilaterally negotiated travel lanes, such as the reciprocal green lane or air travel bubble arrangements.

On these measures, Mr Wong said: “We are adopting this more stringent border measure up till the end of May. At that time, we will do a further review, depending on the global and local situation, and we will continue to update and fine-tune our border measures.”

Mr Wong was speaking at a press conference where a host of measures were announced to curb infections in Singapore following the recent increase in unlinked community cases in the country and new waves in several countries.

He said that Singapore’s borders have been kept tight so far, with an SHN regime of 14 days for travellers coming to Singapore.

“When we saw new variants from specific countries, for example, the United Kingdom, South Africa and India, we lengthened the SHN for these countries,” he said.

“The purpose of lengthening the SHN at that time was to minimise the risk of having more variant cases leaking into our community.

“Since then, the global situation has worsened, and we’re seeing new variants not just from these specific countries because the variants have likely to have spread all over the world,” he said.

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