As Singapore approaches fully vaccinating 50% of its population, it may begin to reduce some safe management measures, which includes allowing bigger dining groups.
At a press conference on June 24, Multi-Ministry Task Force (MTF) co-chair Gan Kim Yong said the country will reach this level “very soon”, and has a goal to have two-thirds of the population fully vaccinated by “around National Day”.
This is with the accelerated vaccine schedule that was also announced, with Singapore being able to administer 80,000 doses of the vaccine per day from June 26.
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Also at the press conference, MTF co-chair Lawrence Wong said that with the increase in vaccination rates, Singapore will revise its public health guidelines, with the revision can be broken down into two aspects.
Wong said: “We could allow gatherings, involving just vaccinated persons to have larger group sizes, and also relax the social distancing rules in such settings, because only vaccinated persons are involved.”
He added this could apply to “a whole range of different settings, religious services, concerts, sporting events, and so on.”
Secondly, the MTF is working on some new guidelines for vaccinated Singaporeans to be able to travel abroad. “When you come back, you either can serve a shortened quarantine time, or the Stay Home Notice (SHN) will be shorter, or maybe waived entirely,” Wong pointed out.
This could be replaced by tests, and will be depending on the country visited.
Furthermore, Wong also revealed that Singapore is “on track” to increase group sizes for higher risk settings in mid-July, including raising the limit for dining in to five persons.
“Exactly what, when this will be, we will work out the data and we will give some advance notice, but this is something we should be able to proceed on,” he added.
Once there is a high enough vaccination rate, Gan said Singapore will also start to open its borders, and will also start allowing more workers, in particular, migrant workers and migrant domestic workers to enter Singapore.
“This will ease the immense pressures our companies have been under since the start of the pandemic and allow projects to restart. [This will also allow] family members to reunite and their migrant domestic workers to join them as Singapore moves into a world where Covid-19 is endemic,” he said.
Photo: MCI
