PM Lee addressed the nation on Singapore’s Covid-19 situation & the “path to new normal” this afternoon. As expected, the next few months of Singapore’s strategy to living with Covid-19 “will be trying”, as mentioned in his address. Daily cases are expected to continue rising for some weeks, but the surge will level off at some point. There are a few new dine-in regulations and updates to take note of.
New Covid-19 dining rules
From 13 October 2021, vaccination-differentiated Covid-19 safe management measures will be expanded to include entry into shopping malls, attractions, hawker centres, and coffee shops. This means that only groups of up to two fully vaccinated persons can dine-in at hawker centres and coffee shops, and also be allowed to enter shopping malls and attractions.
There are also a couple of exceptions to this rule, of course. Unvaccinated individuals with a valid negative pre-event test (PET) result in the past 24 hours, children under the age of 12 and recovered individuals can be included in the group of two.
However, unvaccinated folks are still allowed to do takeaways and visit supermarkets that are large standalone stores. Talk about looking out for the silver lining, huh?
Additionally, the cap of two unique visitors per household per day will still remain. Of course, we should also limit our social gatherings to no more than two per day.
More Covid-19 vaccine booster shots available
Apart from being available to people above 60, the Multi-Ministry Task Force (MTF) also added that those in healthcare, and frontline workers aged 30 & above will be receiving the Covid-19 vaccine booster shots. Those eligible will receive their SMS invitations from today.
Extended travel lanes
Singapore will also be extending its Vaccinated Travel Lanes (VTL) to eight more Category II countries from 19 October 2021.
The countries will be Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Travellers will be able to fly to the aforementioned countries and return without quarantine. They will no longer be required to take the Covid-19 PCR swab test on Day 3 and Day 7 of their arrival in Singapore.
The number of PCR tests will also be reduced from four to two for those entering Singapore under VTL.
WFH to remain the default
For homebodies, work from home remains the default, with employees taking staggered work start times and flexible schedules. Social gatherings in the workplace will not be allowed, so celebrate your co-worker’s birthday on Zoom if you must. If there has to be a workplace event, there will be no food allowed at these venues.
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