Singapore will ban all social gatherings at workplaces from Sep 8, in a bid to reduce the transmission rate in the community.
In a release, the Health Ministry said it has uncovered several large clusters over the last week at bus interchanges, BHG Bugis Junction and Changi General Hospital.
It noted that many of the cases and clusters arose because of higher levels of interactions between people, either in social settings or workplaces.
More specifically, MOH has observed that the recent clusters in workplace settings have taken place because of "lax safe management measures".
These usually occurred especially in areas like staff canteens and pantries, where people tend to let their guard down and interact amongst themselves without their masks on.
As such, employers will be required to put in place a maximum work-from-home (WFH) requirement over a 14 day period, should one or more of their workers be found to have contracted Covid-19 and have returned to their workplace.
This means that everyone in the company who can WFH will be required to do so, and those who are working from home should minimise social gatherings and leave their homes only for essential activities during this 14-day period.
See also: Singapore to introduce booster shots from Sept 14 as new cases mount
For the general population, MOH "strongly encourages" all individuals, especially the vulnerable elderly or persons staying with the elderly, to reduce their non-essential social activities for the next two weeks.
"We should continue to limit our social circle to a small group of regular contacts and limit ourselves to one social gathering a day, whether to another household or in a public place," it says
The ministry also advised all individuals (vaccinated and unvaccinated) to self-test regularly with antigen rapid tests, especially if they participate in higher-risk activities or attend large-scale events.
Cases "could double" with current rate of transmission
MOH said these measures are because the country has seen a spike in new infection cases, from 1,200 in the week ending Sep 5, compared to around 600 the week before.
"If the infection continues at this trajectory, we will see a doubling of cases every week. This means that we can expect to see more individuals suffer serious consequences due to COVID-19 infection," MOH pointed out.
While Singapore's high vaccination rate has allowed it to keep the incidences of severe illnesses and deaths low amongst vaccinated individuals, unvaccinated individuals remain susceptible – over the last 28 days, 6.7% of unvaccinated cases fell severely ill or died.
The measures are being taken so as to "dampen the increasing likelihood of an exponential increase in cases." This will also buy time to get more people vaccinated, and also to roll out its booster programme to those aged 60 and above.
Testing regime to be intensified
Given the rate of increase in community spread, MOH will be increasing the frequency of its mandatory Rostered Routine Testing (RRT) regime from once every fortnight to once a week, starting from Sep 13.
The mandatory RRT is currently in place for higher-risk settings such as F&B, personal care services, and gym and fitness studios, and will now be extended to more settings with frequent community interactions.
This includes settings such as retail mall workers, supermarket staff, last-mile delivery personnel (including parcel and food delivery personnel), as well as public and private transport workers such as taxi drivers, private hire car drivers and all public transport frontline staff.
All workers who have to go to work in such settings must also undergo a seven-day RRT regime, which will be administered primarily through the employer supervised self-swab regime.
The Singapore Government will subsidise the costs of all tests under this enhanced surveillance regime, for both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, until the end of 2021.
Besides these sectors subject to mandatory RRT, MOH announced that it wants to step up regular testing, especially for those who are now working onsite.
The MTF will offer each company 8 antigen rapid test (ART) kits per employee for weekly testing of their staff over a two-month period.
MOH said with the kits, it expects all companies to initiate weekly testing for their onsite staff. The tests can be administered by the individuals themselves at home, or at the work premises.
The ministry highlights though, that employers should put in place a process to ensure that the tests are done properly, and report the results to the respective government agencies.
"We hope that the distribution of ART kits to both households and companies will help to instil a culture of responsibility in administering regular self-tests. This will become an important tool in the new normal, so that we can dampen the impact of COVID-19 without having to impose heightened alerts," MOH said.
