For nearly three years, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had wrought disruptive border closures and network dissolutions in mobility systems of all kinds. Forwarding the concept of the Quick Response (QR) border, this article examines two technological interventions by which mobilities were ultimately revived. First, the removal of quarantine measures often assumed the rapid and mass vaccination of all. Second, the sorting of populations involved the pervasive and seductive use of QR-enabled digital ‘health passes’ to automatically confer and confirm biosecurity. Drawing on Singapore as a case study, the article argues that the remedial logics sparked by COVID-19 both mirror previous iterations of biopolitics, and breathe new intensities in them. In the context of our study, two characteristics of the QR border stand out: one, the heavy reliance of (this) biopolitics on affective consent and public cooperation; and two, the proliferation of trans-scalar and multi-purpose applications due to QR’s flexible automation. The article discusses the implications of these developments for the future of biopolitics and our complicities.
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