Singapore to lift remaining Covid measures

Singapore will lift few of its remaining Covid-19 measures from February 13 as the country’s pandemic situation has remained stable in recent months, the Ministry of Health (MOH) announced on Thursday. The Ministry said that Singapore will adjust the current Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) level from the second lowest level Yellow to the lowest level Green, reports Xinhua news agency. The country will also lift a group of community measures related to mask-wearing, health advisory, and public health measures for migrant workers living in dormitories. One of the adjustments is that mask-wearing on public transport and indoor healthcare and residential care settings will no longer be required under the temporary Covid-19 regulations. Meanwhile, Singapore will lift the remaining Covid-19 border measures, in view of the stable and improving global pandemic situation, and the low impact of imported cases on Singapore’s healthcare capacity. Besides, as Covid-19 is being treated as an endemic disease, the city-state will further scale back pandemic subsidies and re-align the provision of financing support for testing and treatment to that of other acute illnesses from April 1. “MOH will continue to keep a close watch on the evolving Covid-19 situation and our healthcare capacity,” the Ministry added. “If there are signs that our healthcare capacity is becoming strained or a new and more dangerous variant has emerged, we may have to revise the DORSCON level, and reactivate some of our community and border measures again at short notice.” Since the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020, Singapore has reported a total of 2,216,458 Covid-19 cases and 1,722 deaths, according to the MOH.