Fully-vaccinated same-household groups of up to 5 can soon dine at hawker centres, coffeeshops with checks in place

GROUPS of up to 5 fully-vaccinated people from the same household will soon be able to dine in at hawker centres or coffeeshops that have access control and checking systems in place, the multi-ministry taskforce on Covid-19 announced on Monday (Nov 15).

The first group of hawker centres is expected to have such systems in place before the end of November, with the rest to follow suit "soon after", said the taskforce.

Once the systems are in place, up to 5 fully-vaccinated people from the same household may dine together, just as in other F&B establishments currently.

The Stabilisation Phase began on Sep 27 and was extended till Nov 21. With that date approaching, taskforce co-chair and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong said the taskforce will monitor the situation over the next few days, with an update to be given "early next week".

The National Environment Agency (NEA) has been engaging the Hawkers' Associations and Town Councils, while the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) has been engaging coffeeshop operators.

Coffeeshop operators will have the option of putting in place a system to control access and check patron status. If they do so, they can then allow groups of up to 5. Otherwise, the prevailing group size of two will apply.

The move is good news, said Anthony Low, chairman of the hawker division of the Federation of Merchants' Associations Singapore. "This will strongly encourage more households, who will be willing and find it convenient to dine in hawker centres," he said in Mandarin.

In determining if diners are from the same household, the government will now accept myICA and SGWorkPass as proof of residence, in addition to NRIC and SingPass currently.

Separately, the community visit programme for migrant workers in dormitories will be expanded to 3,000 per day for any location, up from 3,000 per week now, with effect from Dec 3. From the same date, daily visits to recreation centre visits will also be allowed, up from thrice a week now.

These announcements come as Singapore's week-on-week ratio of community cases has remained stable at around 0.8 to 1.0 over the past week, while daily new infection numbers have trended at about 3,000 a day.

In the past 28 days, the proportion of patients who require oxygen supplementation has held steady at 0.8 per cent, and those who require intensive care unit (ICU) care at 0.3 per cent. The number of cases in the ICU remains high but stable in at close to 130 cases each day, with overall ICU occupancy at about 63 per cent.

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