Yes, it is rather ironic that it is now the US and Europe which are the riskiest places to be right now and yet there are still several countries enforcing travel restrictions to Singapore, which is probably one of the safest places to be right now! But that's politics for you.

In a few weeks time, Europe will be asking what plausible rationale could there be to not exclude US travellers. Well, the answer is once you have established community transmission, travel restrictions and quarantine are increasingly futile. I can't help but think the world leaders in countries with established community transmission are placing too much emphasis on travel restriction, case finding and quarantine instead of ploughing resources into effective social distancing and boosting medical infrastructure. Everyone seems to be too scared to admit we are now well into the pandemic phase of COVID-19 and will be in this position for several months before (in my opinion) we end up with a new endemic coronavirus.

COVID-19 isn't going away. It is here to stay. The question is what route do we want to take from pandemic to endemic because even if containment is not possible we still have the capacity to greatly slow down transmission which will save many lives as we ration precious medical resources. But the key to doing this will be effective social distancing measures which everyone adopts (i.e. assume everyone is infectious until proven otherwise and act accordingly), not travel restriction and quarantine.