Opening Remarks by Minister Gan Kim Yong at the MTF Press Conference

1. Good afternoon. Since our last press conference a week ago, the number of daily infections has stabilised at around 3,000 cases a day. Both the week-on-week ratio of infections and the number of serious cases have also remained stable at around 1.0.

2. We will continue to monitor the situation closely, and take a careful, step-by-step approach to resuming economic and social activities. We will make further adjustments to our safe management measures (SMMs).

3. On dining-in. Last week, we announced that up to 5 fully-vaccinated persons from the same household can dine-in together at F&B establishments first, and later at hawker centres and coffee shops once we had sorted out the details with the stakeholders.

• NEA and SFA have been engaging the hawker centre and coffee shop operators and associations.

• By the end of November, the majority of hawker centres will be able to put in place the necessary control measures so that up to 5 persons from the same household can dine-in together. NEA and SFA will update with further details once they have been worked out with the stakeholders.

• We will also extend this concession to coffeeshops who are able to put in place the necessary checks.

4. We had announced earlier pilots to allow vaccinated persons with additional pre-activity testing (“VDS+Test”) to enjoy relaxed SMMs in some settings, such as selected mass sporting events and MICE events. If we are able to conduct these pilots successfully, we will expand the use of this VDS+Test protocol to additional settings. This will be an important signal of our ability to manage COVID-19 safely even as we reopen.

5. Migrant workers make significant contributions to our economy and society, and we must continue to care for their well-being, including their mental well-being. From 3 December, we will allow migrant workers residing in dormitories to visit recreation centres and selected places in the community – with the necessary safeguards in place. Minister Tan will share more details later.

6. We also continue to update our border measures, in line with the global situation, and update the country/ region classification. In addition, we intend to further expand the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) scheme to include India, Indonesia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Minister Iswaran will elaborate later.

7. Our discussion with Malaysia on the VTL-like arrangement for our land links has progressed well. We are working to launch this soon, hopefully in a few weeks’ time. Singapore and Malaysia share close ties on many fronts, especially among our people. Many families have been separated from one another for a long time because of border restrictions. We hope this land link arrangement will allow many of them to be reunited, and they will be one of our priorities.

8. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for your patience and support. As we resume more economic and social activities, we do expect the number of COVID-19 cases to rise. However, with vaccinations and boosters, as well as vaccination-differentiated SMMs (VDS), we hope that the number of serious cases can be kept low. This will avoid overtaxing our hospital system and our healthcare workers. We will continue to adjust our measures as we progressively reopen, so that we can protect lives while preserving livelihoods. I would like to remind everyone to continue to remain vigilant, exercise social responsibility and test yourselves regularly. Let us work hand-in-hand as we journey towards living with COVID-19. Thank you.