Singapore unlikely to be hit with work stoppages, service disruption when Omicron wave crests

Singapore

SINGAPORE is expected to avoid any major disruptions to essential services when the Omicron wave hits, as a high vaccination rate and revisions to healthcare protocols should stave off a labour crunch.

A projected surge in infections - which Health Minister Ong Ye Kung stressed on Monday (Jan 10) may hit at least 15,000 cases a day - calls to mind massive labour shortages in other countries battling the heavily mutated Omicron variant.

The Singapore National Employers Federation is encouraging employers to implement regular testing for staff, even if it is not mandatory, as executive director Sim Gim Guan noted that Omicron's elevated infectiousness could raise risks of workplace transmission.

Numerous businesses - including essential service providers, and major fast food and supermarket chains - declined to disclose their plans for the Covid-19 surge when contacted by The Business Times.

But new rules letting infected workers return to the job sooner could ease the strain, as the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) told BT the protocols "will help employers and employees better cope with potential disruptions to businesses".

Under revised healthcare protocols since last week, patients with only mild symptoms can return to daily activities in as little as 3 days, if they test negative on a rapid test.

Otherwise, they have to isolate at home for up to 10 or 14 days, depending on vaccination status.

"For asymptomatic employees who cannot work from home, the revised protocol... shortens the duration that they are away," the MOM spokesperson said, when queried.

"The revised protocols will support the business continuity plans that employers have put in place over the past two years and minimise the impact on livelihoods."

A spokesperson for DBS did not elaborate on any possibility of disruption to in-person operations such as branch service, but told BT that "we continue to maintain our business continuity measures to ensure our operational resilience".

Still, BT understands that some banking players have contingency plans to enable service delivery even if branches are forced to close - similar to what was done during the two-month "circuit breaker", or quasi-lockdown, in mid-2020.

Organisations are also counting on high Covid-19 vaccination rates to reduce the severity of illness and keep their employees fit to work. For instance, 99 per cent of OCBC's staff in Singapore are already fully vaccinated, disclosed Francisco John Celio, head of group corporate security at the local lender.

Some essential services in Singapore had faced disruption in earlier stages of the pandemic - such as an outbreak at a packet-processing postal facility in early 2020, and 8 clusters involving staff at bus interchanges from August to October 2021.

But Singapore's high vaccination rate may have turned the tide. Some 87 per cent of the population was fully vaccinated as of Monday, and 47 per cent had booster shots.

UOB economist Barnabas Gan said: "Even as countries such as Australia, Canada, United Kingdom and United States saw a massive manpower crunch due to Covid-19, Singapore, with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, is unlikely to experience significant negative economic complications."

Terence Ho, associate professor in practice at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said most people here can recover or isolate at home and return to work "within a reasonable period". He added: "It is appropriate that our protocols seek to minimise the burden on the public healthcare system and limit disruption to the economy."

The Straits Times this week also reported that the staff-strapped healthcare sector could deploy volunteers.

Infected staff abroad have been recalled to the job amid widespread labour outages that disrupted essential services such as public transit and healthcare.

The airline industry in the United States last month called for isolation periods for fully vaccinated workers who test positive to be halved to 5 days, while the Canadian province of Quebec cut the duration for infected healthcare workers from 10 days to just 7.

But such scenarios are unlikely in Singapore, where Sim said that workplaces should follow official protocols: "Requiring any employees who tested positive to return to the workplace earlier than they should will put their colleagues and visitors at risk of infection."

Similarly, a spokesperson for the Restaurant Association of Singapore stressed that food and beverage businesses will need to follow the Ministry of Health's rules.

Ho, who used to be the MOM manpower planning and policy director, believes that "there is a good chance we will be able to ride out this wave without widespread disruption to healthcare services and economic activity".

Gan added: "Tighter safe management measures would be the last resort, although not impossible."