Only fully vaccinated people can return to workplace from Jan 1

SINGAPORE - From Jan 1 next year, all workers who return to the office have to be fully vaccinated or recovered from Covid-19 in the past 270 days.

This expansion of vaccination-differentiated measures means that unvaccinated people will need to test negative for Covid-19 before they can return to the workplace, and they will need to pay for the costs of these tests.

Announcing this at a press conference on Saturday (Oct 23), Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong said 96 per cent of Singapore's workforce has been fully vaccinated. There are approximately 113,000 unvaccinated workers, more than 10 per cent of whom are seniors.

Mr Gan also outlined other moves aimed at stabilising Singapore's Covid-19 situation, including adding China's Sinovac to the national vaccination programme, along with the existing Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

This is to cater to people who cannot get vaccinated with the current mRNA vaccines.

Three doses of the Sinovac vaccine will be required for a person to be considered fully vaccinated.

However, Sinovac will not be used as a booster for people who have already gotten two doses of an mRNA vaccine.

Singapore is also changing its healthcare protocols to allow infected pregnant women to recover at home, as long as they are fully vaccinated, aged under 35 and less than 26 weeks pregnant.

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The Multi-Ministry Task Force handling Covid-19 also said that people who are medically ineligible for any Covid-19 vaccines will be given special concessions to enter premises where vaccination is required, such as malls. More details will be released by the Health Ministry (MOH) later.

This concession will not, however, apply to the workplace. This means that everyone who is not vaccinated - no matter the reason - will have to take a pre-event test at an approved test provider before returning to work. This includes those medically ineligible and pregnant women.

"Tripartite partners have agreed on special considerations that employers should grant to these groups, such as allowing work from home without affecting performance and coming to a reasonable agreement on cost-sharing of the tests," MOH said in a statement on Saturday.

It added that it will release a joint statement with the Manpower Ministry on how such arrangements can be worked out.

The task force had on Wednesday announced that the tighter curbs currently in place - including restricting group sizes for dining in to two people - will be extended for a month till Nov 21.

MOH on Saturday reiterated that stabilisation measures will not stay static in the coming month, adding that it is looking at several indicators to decide its next steps.

At present, the weekly infection rate - that is, the ratio of community cases in the past week over the week before - is now slightly above 1.

This means infections are continuing to rise and put pressure on the healthcare system, it said.

If this number drops below 1 and the hospital situation remains stable, it will consider some calibrated easing of measures. This will include allowing members from the same household to dine out together.

Elaborating on this point, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong said the Government looks at three indicators in deciding whether or not to move ahead with easing.

These are: The daily rate of increase in infection numbers, the proportion of infected people who fall seriously ill and the occupancy rates in hospitals, especially intensive care units.

MOH's daily reports will be updated with some of these numbers, so the public will be able to track them as well, he said.