Short-term travellers holding an Air Travel Pass (ATP) with travel history to Australia within the past 21 days before their departure to Singapore will not be allowed to enter Singapore.

These measures will be taken for travellers from Australia “given the increase in the number of COVID-19 cases there”, said MOH. Four cities in Australia are currently under lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19.

READ: Singapore tightens COVID-19 restrictions for travellers from Australia’s New South Wales

Under current measures, all travellers from Australia, excluding those from New South Wales, will have to take a COVID-19 test upon arrival at the airport, in lieu of a stay-home notice.

Short-term travellers holding an ATP with travel history to New South Wales within the last 21 days are not allowed to enter Singapore.

Currently, Singaporeans, permanent residents and long-term pass holders who have travelled to New South Wales in the past three weeks will also be placed on a seven-day stay-home notice at their residence when they arrive in Singapore.

The measures for New South Wales came into effect at 11.59pm last Saturday.

TRAVELLERS FROM GUANGDONG PROVINCE

From 11.59pm on Friday, all travellers entering Singapore with travel history to China’s Guangdong province within the past 21 days before departure for Singapore will undergo a COVID-19 PCR test upon arrival.

They will be allowed to go about their activities in Singapore if the PCR test result is negative, and will no longer be required to serve a seven-day stay-home notice period.

Short-term visitors with travel history to Guangdong province within the last 21 days before departure to Singapore can apply for an ATP with immediate effect, for entry into Singapore on or after Jul 7.

Currently, travellers from Guangdong have to serve a seven-day stay-home notice period at their place of residence. They also have to take PCR tests on arrival in Singapore and before the end of their stay-home notice period.

Travellers who are already serving their seven-day stay-home notice at their residence as of 11.59pm on Friday will still be required to complete their seven-day stay-home notice and exit swab, said MOH.

Border measures for travellers from Guangdong province will be eased as the COVID-19 situation in the province has improved, said MOH.

All other travellers with travel history to mainland China, excluding Guangdong province, in the last 21 days prior to travel will continue to be subject to a COVID-19 test upon arrival at the airport, in lieu of a stay-home notice, said MOH.

“As the global situation evolves, we will continue to adjust our border measures to manage the risk of importation and transmission to the community,” said the ministry.

SURFSIDE: Another body was recovered from the ruins of a Florida condominium tower on Tuesday (Jun 29), the mayor said, raising the death toll in the collapse to at least 12 with 149 people still listed as missing.

The latest casualty of the disaster, which could ultimately rank as the worst accidental building collapse in US history, was not immediately identified by Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava during an afternoon news conference.

Investigators have not yet determined what caused a major section of the 40-year-old building to collapse abruptly. Initial attention has focused on structural deficiencies described in a 2018 engineer’s report.

In April 2021, the condominium association’s president warned residents that concrete damage had “gotten significantly worse,” and urged them to pay about US$15 million in assessments needed to make repairs, media reported.

READ: Before Florida building collapse, more than US$9 million in repairs needed

Florida emergency management director Kevin Guthrie said local authorities on Tuesday had asked the federal government to send additional urban search and rescue teams to the scene in the town of Surfside.

Authorities say they still have hope that survivors might yet be found in the pile of concrete and twisted metal left when nearly half of the 12-storey, 136-unit tower caved in.

“The rescue effort continues unabated except for that brief lightning storm we had today,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said. No one has been pulled alive from the ruins of the oceanfront Champlain Towers South since a few hours after one side of the high-rise collapsed early on Thursday morning as most residents slept.

Fire officials have spoken of detecting faint sounds from inside the rubble pile and finding voids deep in the debris large enough to possibly sustain life.

But Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Chief Alan Cominsky said search-and-rescue personnel faced an enormous task while working 12-hour shifts in the heat.

“That building collapsed almost in a footprint of where that building stood – we’re talking about 12 storeys, with subterranean garages all within that same footprint,” Cominsky said. “I’m sure to emphasise the magnitude of what we encountered, what we’re seeing,” he told reporters.

BIDEN TO VISIT

Rescue workers have moved 3 million pounds of concrete piece by piece from the debris since the collapse, Cominsky said. The teams include experts sent by Israel and Mexico to assist in the search.

President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, will visit Surfside on Thursday, the White House said.

The disaster has sent officials in nearby areas scrambling to check the safety of buildings.

Miami Beach, just to the south of Surfside, has ordered a “walkthrough visual” inspection of about 500 multi-family commercial units over the next week, Mayor Dan Gelber said.

“But at the same time we are going to require within probably three weeks, all of these buildings in the recertification process to come up with an updated report,” Gelber told CNN.

A makeshift memorial a block from the site held bouquets of fresh hydrangeas tucked into a chain-link fence. A poster board with hearts had a message for the first responders: “Thank you for looking for my grandmother.”

Levin Cava said she had spoken on Tuesday with State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. A grand jury has yet to be impanelled, she said, but when it is, “we will be fully on board”.

The 2018 engineer’s report warned of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab beneath the pool deck and deterioration, including exposed rebar, in the underground parking garage. The report’s author, Frank Morabito, wrote that the deterioration would “expand exponentially” if not repaired.

“It’s all starting to come together now, because like I’ve said all along, there was something very, very wrong at this building,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett told CNN on Tuesday when asked about the April 2021 warning by the condo association’s president.

“Buildings in America just don’t fall down like this.”

READ: Demands for answers in aftermath of Miami building collapse

A lawyer who works with the condo association, Donna DiMaggio Berger, previously said the issues outlined in the 2018 report were typical for older buildings in the area.

Ross Prieto, then Surfside’s top building official, met with residents weeks after the report was produced and assured them the building was “in very good shape”, according to minutes of the meeting released on Monday.

Reuters was unable to reach Prieto, who is no longer employed by Surfside. He told the Miami Herald newspaper he did not remember getting the report.

BERLIN: The German military late on Tuesday (Jun 29) concluded its withdrawal from Afghanistan after almost two decades, finishing Germany’s deadliest military mission since World War 2.

“Our last troops left Afghanistan this night after almost 20 years and are on their way home,” German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said in a statement.

“This is the end of a historic chapter, of an intensive mission which has tested the Bundeswehr and in which the Bundeswehr has proven itself in combat.”

It was in Afghanistan that Germany’s military fought the first ground battles since the end of World War 2.

US President Joe Biden and NATO announced in mid-April that they would pull out the roughly 10,000 foreign troops still in Afghanistan at the time by Sep 11, the 20th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York that prompted the mission.

Over the last years, Germany had the second largest contingent of troops after the United States in Afghanistan, with around 150,000 soldiers deployed over the past two decades, many of them serving more than one tour in the country.

Fifty-nine German soldiers died in Afghanistan, 35 of them killed in combat or as a result of militant attacks, making it Germany’s deadliest military mission since World War 2.

Wrapping up the operation, Germany said it would have to redeploy the equivalent of around 800 containers of equipment such as armoured vehicles, helicopters, weapons and ammunition as the drawdown began.

The multinational camp in northern Mazar-i-Sharif led by Germany had been reinforced with troops and mortars, ramping up security for the duration of the withdrawal to guard the base against attacks by the Taliban.

The Taliban severely curtailed women’s and other human rights during their reign in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when they were ousted by US-led forces. Since then they have waged a long-running insurgency and now control wide swathes of territory.

SURFSIDE: US President Joe Biden will visit the site of a deadly apartment building collapse in southern Florida later this week, the White House announced on Tuesday (Jun 29), as rescuers scoured the wreckage in an increasingly desperate search for survivors.

A 12-story oceanfront condominium in Surfside, a neighbourhood near Miami, pancaked into rubble in the early hours of Thursday last week, with the official death toll of 11 expected to rise as hope dwindles for 150 people still unaccounted for.

The White House said the president would visit the site with First Lady Jill Biden on Thursday to ensure state and local officials have everything they need for the rescue effort.

“They want to thank the heroic first responders, search-and-rescue teams, and everyone who’s been working tirelessly around the clock,” said press secretary Jen Psaki.

The first couple also wants to “meet with the families who have been forced to endure this terrible tragedy, waiting in anguish and heartbreak for word of their loved ones, to offer them comfort as search and rescue efforts continue,” she said.

Residents in the part of Champlain Towers South that remained intact reported being awakened around 1.30am on Thursday by what sounded like cracks of thunder that shook their rooms.

Rescuers who arrived in the moments after the tower came down helped evacuate dozens of residents, and pulled one teenage boy alive from the rubble.

But authorities have faced mounting anger in the days since the disaster from friends and family who have received no further news of loved ones feared trapped beneath the smoking wreckage.

Underscoring the slow pace of progress in the “painstaking, gruelling” search for survivors, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said Tuesday that the death toll had not risen overnight from 11.

Israeli and Mexican engineers and search-and-rescue specialists have joined an army of American workers at the scene, backed by cranes and sniffer dogs.

“There are currently 210 people working on the site. The urban search and rescue team has been augmented by teams from all over the state and all over the world,” Levine Cava said.

“They are working throughout inclement weather. They are working as hard as they ever have.”

The outlook has nevertheless grown increasingly grim, with no one emerging alive from the rubble in the aftermath.

‘UNIMAGINABLY DIFFICULT’

Friends and neighbours of the building’s occupants held a vigil on a nearby beach on Monday evening, clutching white roses and sobbing as a facilitator burned incense and played a gong.

Glow sticks and dirt laid on the sand spelled out the word “HOPE”, while down the coast at the ruins of the apartment block, the sound of rescuers’ power tools carried on through the night.

Experts are looking at possible pre-existing critical flaws in the structure of the apartment tower.

An October 2018 report released by city officials late Friday revealed fears of “major structural damage” in the complex, from the concrete slab under the pool deck to the columns and beams in the parking garage.

Jean Wodnicki, the chair of the condo association, described “accelerating” damage to the building since then, in a letter to residents in April.

Repairs had been set to begin soon in the 40-year-old building – but did not come soon enough.

Biden said Sunday his administration would coordinate with local officials and was “ready to provide any support or assistance that is needed”.

“This is an unimaginably difficult time for the families enduring this tragedy,” he said in a statement.

Other large companies registered to provide doses include chipmaker SK Hynix and panel maker LG Display, according to the companies. Under the plans only companies’ own staff and stationed workers from suppliers are eligible for the vaccinations.

South Korea reported 595 new infections in the 24 hours up to midnight on Monday, bringing its tally to 156,167 cases, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said, with a death toll of 2,017.

READ: Taiwan to extend COVID-19 curbs into July

Taiwan’s own direct orders also include 10 million doses from AstraZeneca Plc and 4.76 million from the COVAX global sharing scheme for lower income countries.

It has another 10 million doses on order from two Taiwanese companies who are developing domestic vaccines, but it remains unclear when they might start being administered as they have yet to be approved by the government.

Taiwan’s own domestic outbreak of the virus is being brought under control, but it remains wary about a handful of cases of the highly contagious Delta variant in southern Taiwan.

BANGKOK: Owners of eateries in Bangkok and nearby provinces were left frustrated after a ban on dining-in was reimposed on Monday (Jun 28), a week after the government relaxed COVID-19 control measures.

The ban was announced late Saturday night after Thailand’s daily case numbers rose above 2,000 for several weeks. It was enforced along with other restrictions on interprovincial travel, construction sites and gatherings in various parts of the country, and will last at least 30 days.

This came as a blow to many restaurant owners, some of whom had just begun to recover from the previous dining-in ban.

“How did I feel when I heard about the latest restrictions? Exasperated,” said Mika Apichatsakol. Her vegan eatery Bangkok City Diner had suspended its dining-in services from May 1 to follow the government’s order. Since then, it has only managed to serve food for deliveries.

READ: Thailand to reimpose COVID-19 curbs to contain outbreak

“We had actually planned to reopen for dine-in on Jul 1. We announced it about a week ago, and now we’ll just be going back to deliveries only,” Mika told CNA.

Thailand is battling a third wave of COVID-19 infections, which started in April when a cluster was found at high-end nightclubs in Bangkok.

More than 220,000 people have since tested positive for the coronavirus and at least 1,840 patients have died from the disease.

To curb the spread, the government imposed restrictions on eateries and various businesses. Still, the situation worsened last month when the virus infected inmates in crowded prisons and detention facilities nationwide.

Last week, some control measures were eased and food and beverage outlets were allowed to stay open for diners until 11pm. But that did not last long.

READ: Thailand to shut construction sites, seal off camps to contain COVID-19

Many new clusters were reported and a number of them involved workers in construction and service industries.

According to Thailand’s Disease Control Department, health officials are monitoring more than 100 clusters in Bangkok alone.

The situation prompted Prime Minister Gen Prayut Chan-o-cha to impose certain restrictions in areas with high COVID-19 infections such as Bangkok and its nearby provinces.

For some restaurateurs, the return of the ban on dining-in services has devastating impact on their businesses and staff members. Each wave of outbreaks came with restrictions that slashed their income and shrank their capital with hardly any compensation from the government.

“I was watching the news until 1am and I was puzzled,” said restaurateur Thavalsak Grajangpho from Ruean Rim Nam in Bangkok.

“I think it’s the same for every restaurant that had done so – all of a sudden, in the morning, we had to cancel all our orders,” he added.

I was quite surprised and I think it’s unfair.

On Monday, Gen Prayut promised compensation for entrepreneurs and employees affected by his latest order. They include restaurant owners, their staff members, construction workers and their employers in Bangkok and its vicinity.

“We’re no less affected than you are, even more so actually because we have to make sure everybody can live through this period. Let me tell you, many countries even have it worse than we do right now,” he said in a press briefing after meeting economic advisors at the Government House.

“I’ll do my best to take care.”

According to Danucha Pichayanan, secretary-general of the National Economic and Social Development Council, employees affected by the new set of restrictions will receive 50 per cent of their salary but no more than 7,500 baht (US$235) from the government, with an additional 2,000 baht (US$63), if they are registered in the social security system.

Employers will receive 3,000 baht (US$94) for every employee as long as they too are registered in the system. However, the number of employees is capped at 200.

“In case entrepreneurs and employees are not in the system but need help, please quickly register yourselves in the social security system,” Danucha said in a press conference at the Government House on Monday.

“Employers will then receive 3,000 baht for each employee they have. Employees of Thai nationality will then get 2,000 baht each as well.”

However, these employees will not receive the subsidy, which is worth half of their salary. They are required by law to contribute to the social security fund for at least six months before they can receive the subsidy, according to Danucha. The subsidy is available for one month.

For restaurant owners like Thavalsak, who still have to pay rent and workers, the future remains uncertain.

“This wave is worse than the first time and there is no guarantee that after a month of closure, it will really be over,” he told CNA. “I’m angry, definitely. I feel like they don’t empathise with SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) like us at all.”

“I think everyone is wondering why restaurants are shut and not venues like malls, and how many of the COVID-19 clusters are actually caused by restaurants,” Mika added.