Residents can hardly wait for Singapore to reopen its borders now that 80 per cent of its population has been inoculated against Covid-19, one of the world's best vaccination rates, Reuters reports.

The regional travel hub, with about 5.7m residents, is among the first countries to reopen in the region, albeit slowly.

Starting next week, Singapore will allow quarantine-free entry to vaccinated visitors from just two countries: Germany and Brunei. Although such a guarded approach is likely to delay the recovery of the tourism industry, other nations with low infection rates will be watching.

"Singapore is a good example for Australia to pay attention to because we are probably going to be in a similar situation — we need to open up and we need to do it in a way that Covid-19 is going to become endemic," said Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and microbiologist at Canberra Hospital.

Read more here.