Causes for Recent COVID-19 Infections amongst Bus Captains at Bus Interchanges
Ministry of TransportSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns the modes of COVID-19 transmission at bus interchanges, potential commuter infections, and vaccination requirements for bus captains, as raised by Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song. Minister for Transport S Iswaran replied that over 96% of public transport workers are fully vaccinated and that infections likely originated from the community rather than the interchanges. He highlighted that safe management measures and cleaning regimes have been enhanced and are continually reviewed in consultation with public health experts. The Minister detailed that proactive testing caught half of the positive cases, leading to the commencement of a mandatory seven-day Fast and Easy Test Rostered Routine Testing regime on September 1. Additionally, targeted swab tests are being conducted at interchanges with higher case numbers to ensure the early detection and containment of the virus.
Transcript
56 Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song asked the Minister for Transport (a) what have been the modes of transmission of COVID-19 infections at bus interchanges; (b) whether any commuters have been infected at bus interchanges or while on buses with infected bus captains; and (c) whether public transport companies will be requiring all their bus captains to be vaccinated.
Mr S Iswaran: Ensuring the safety of our public transport workers and commuters has been our top priority. One way to achieve this is through a high vaccination rate to keep frontline staff and commuters safe. Our public transport workers were one of the first groups to be offered vaccinations early this year. More than 96% of them have been fully vaccinated.
Since the start of the circuit breaker period last year, we have enhanced safe management measures and the cleaning regimes of our buses, trains and public transport nodes, especially high contact areas. These have enabled public transport operations to run smoothly and safely over the past 18 months. As the virus mutates, we have continually reviewed the adequacy of our measures in consultation with public health experts.
MOH's preliminary investigations indicate that, given the high number of cases in the community, it is likely that the infections amongst bus workers originated from the community. When community cases rose sharply in July, the public transport operators implemented regular testing for their employees working near COVID-19 clusters, to pick up and isolate COVID-19 positive cases early. This proactive testing, coupled with community surveillance testing by MOH, helped to quickly detect and isolate about half of the current bus frontline workers who tested positive for COVID-19. In addition to the seven-day Fast and Easy Test (FET) Rostered Routine Testing (RRT) regime which commenced on 1 September, we are also conducting swab tests at interchanges with a higher number of cases to detect cases and quickly contain further spread.