Criteria for Restrictions in Phase Three of Reopening to be Lifted

3 Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Health (a) what are the Ministry’s plans for Singapore to ease out of Phase Three; (b) what are the specific criteria that must be fulfilled for the current Phase Three restrictions to be lifted; and (c) whether a certain vaccination rate must be achieved before we can explore an exit from Phase Three.

The Senior Minister of State for Health (Dr Janil Puthucheary) (for the Minister for Health): Mr Speaker, Phase Three is a new normal which will last until the time when there is evidence on vaccine effectiveness in preventing future outbreaks, and a substantial proportion of the population is vaccinated and the rest of the world also has the virus under control.

Since we entered Phase Three of our reopening on 28 December 2020, we have seen increased COVID-19 outbreaks in many countries around the world and the emergence of more transmissible viral variants. Several weeks ago, we also faced an increase in unlinked cases and community cases in Singapore. Hence, even within Phase Three, we had tightened community safe management measures and recalibrated the pace and scale at which activities were able to resume. While the outbreaks in several countries have abated in recent weeks, we need to remain vigilant. We will continue to find ways to allow our economy and our society to further reopen in a safe way. But given the dynamic situation here and around the world, we will need to adjust our safe management measures from time to time. We do not expect to move out of Phase Three any time soon.

The vaccines approved in Singapore have been shown to be effective in providing protection against the COVID-19 virus. We are still awaiting more evidence about how effective they will be about preventing transmission. We are also closely monitoring their effectiveness against new viral variants. Meanwhile, our best strategy is to continue to be disciplined about safe management measures and achieve a high level of vaccination within our population to boost our collective immunity.

Singapore has made good progress on our vaccination programme. We are continuing to bring in more vaccine supplies, and we encourage all eligible Singaporeans to take up the vaccines to protect themselves and others around them.

Mr Yip Hon Weng (Yio Chu Kang): I thank the Senior Minister of State for his reply. It is reported in the media that if all goes to plan, Singapore will have enough vaccines to vaccinate everyone by the third quarter this year. We read yesterday that China's Sinovac vaccine arrived in Singapore, but has not been approved for use yet. I would like to ask the Ministry if Sinovac is approved, will this push forward the vaccination timeline?

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Speaker, the vaccination timeline is dependent on a number of factors; most importantly, our ability to ramp up the capacity and capability of the vaccination centres and also the willingness of Singaporeans to step forward to get vaccinated and, indeed, the supply of vaccines. The approval or licensure of one given vaccine is not a rate limiting step in that process. We will look at the vaccine licensure as an issue of safety and efficacy of a given vaccine.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim (Sengkang): I thank the Senior Minister of State for his elucidation. I am wondering if he would be willing to share the processes that the Ministry may have in place for if there are outbreaks of more virulent strains of COVID-19 which are not as amenable to the traditional safe management measures, which would render some of our existing procedures less efficacious.

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for his question. The fundamentals of how we managed COVID-19 – safe management, hand-washing, PPE, distancing, reducing the dwelling time of crowds in crowded areas – these are going to be necessary and important parts of our fight against COVID-19, for as long as the virus is with us, whatever the variant may be. How we apply a given set of safe management measures will very much depend on the burden of disease currently in Singapore and and the risk that our population is exposed to. This will be a dynamic process as we go forward.

And then, separately, we have to have processes in place to deal with the outbreaks themselves. So, the first portion was about how we prevent outbreaks and transmission. The second is when outbreaks occur. Again, the fundamentals will be the same: that we need to test people, we need to contact trace people and then we need to quarantine. What we will need to calibrate is, for example, how many steps removed you might want to contact trace, how long one quarantines an individual for, and what are the tests before someone is released from a quarantine.

So, these are the general processes, but I think when it comes to the specifics of a given viral variant – these are now in a hypothetical space – the key point would be that we take reference from technical and professional advice. And we are very grateful that we have a depth of technical and professional advice to advise us in fighting COVID-19.

Dr Tan Wu Meng (Jurong): I thank the Senior Minister of State for his answers. Integral to safe management and containment is, of course, the process by which we test suspected patients who may be carrying the COVID-19 virus. Can I ask the Senior Minister of State, what is the current turnaround time for a PCR swab test?

And the reason I ask this is because one of my residents late last night, contacted me saying on Wednesday morning, he went to the polyclinic and was required to take a swab test. He has been asked to stay home till the test result comes out and can be confirmed as negative. But his wedding is on Saturday. And so, if he does not get the result in time, he may have to cancel the wedding. So, this is a very material question for Singaporeans who may be in a challenging personal situation. And so, I was wondering if the Senior Minister of State might be able to share a bit more about the timeline for the swab test turnaround.

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Speaker, my apologies to the Member. I do not have the data in front of me. The Parliamentary Question (PQ) was very much about the considerations for Phase Three, Reopening. I would say that the turnaround time is affected by a number of processes. Some of them are logistic and administrative as well as the laboratory process itself. We can follow up with the Member and his constituent separately.

I just want to make an additional point, Mr Speaker, about the question that was raised earlier. If we do have more vaccines, it is possible that we can accelerate our timeline, but ultimately, this will depend on Singaporeans being willing and coming forward to be vaccinated.

Mr Speaker: I would like to remind Members to keep their supplementary questions supplementary and related to the original PQs. Dr Wan Rizal.