Dine-in, social gathering sizes cut to 2 for a month from Sept 27 amid exponential case surge

Sharon See

Published Fri, Sep 24, 2021 · 10:31 AM

SOCIAL gatherings and dine-in capacity will be pared down to groups of two for the third time this year, as Singapore battles an exponential rise in Covid-19 cases in its endeavour to live with the coronavirus endemically.

Taking effect from Sept 27 until Oct 24, this is a reduction from the current permissible group size of up to five persons, although the government's Covid-19 multi-ministry taskforce said on Friday that this does not signal a return to the "heightened alert" phase.

Diners must be fully vaccinated to eat in at regular food and beverage establishments, while hawker centres and coffee shops can continue to accept customers who are unvaccinated, the taskforce said.

Correspondingly, households should not receive more than two unique visitors a day, and individuals should continue to limit their overall number of social gatherings to not more than one a day.

Work-from-home (WFH) will be the default for employees who are able to do so, and social gatherings at the workplace will continue to be disallowed.

The 10-day snap WFH regime will be suspended during this four-week period. Meanwhile, those who are unable to work from home are strongly encouraged to do an antigen rapid test every week.

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Home-Based Learning (HBL), which will be implemented for all primary and special education schools from Sept 27 to Oct 6, will be extended by a day to Oct 7. Private education institutions must also carry out HBL for all students 12 and under from Sept 27 to Oct 10.

At the same time, the taskforce is urging individuals to reduce social activities and wear their masks diligently. In particular, the elderly and those with co-morbidities should stay home as much as possible except for essential activities.

Announcing these tightened measures at a virtual briefing, taskforce co-chair and Trade and Industry Ministry Gan Kim Yong said this was a "very difficult decision", as the measures would affect many businesses and people.

This comes as Singapore, which has one of the world's highest vaccination rates at 82 per cent, is seeing an exponential increase in Covid-19 cases that began from Aug 23.

Daily cases are now at about 1,600, and the taskforce estimates this could reach 3,200 by next week. Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said there are plans in place to prepare for up to 5,000 infections a day.

Finance Minister Lawrence Wong said while the wave of infection will crest at some point, "we don't know what the daily numbers will be at the peak or when this crest will happen".

"But because of this rapid surge in cases and the stresses and strains we are seeing on our healthcare system and on our healthcare workers, we have to put in place these temporary breaks," Mr Wong said.

Mr Gan said the tightening may not reduce the number of daily new infections immediately, but it is likely to slow down the speed of increase and avoid overtaxing healthcare workers, as well as buy time for the authorities to scale up support for Home Recovery and Community Care Facilities.

Read more:

Covid-19 MULTI-MINISTRY TASKFORCE

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