Singapore will be opening up vaccination drives for non-residents from June 30, two days earlier than planned, the country’s health minister Ong Ye Kung said, reported Bloomberg.
Singapore has been using mRNA vaccines, Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna, for inoculating its citizens, and it plans on administering the first Covid-19 vaccine shot to most of its population by the end of July after successfully securing more supplies.
Singaporean authorities have in recent weeks made it clear that Covid-19 will be treated like an endemic, shifting focus from daily infection counts to hospitalisations. The island nation which serves as burgeoning business and tourism hub lost out on two important global events, the World Economic Forum and Formula One night race, both have been scrapped due to the pandemic. The move to vaccinate non-residents lines up with its efforts of opening up much like rival Hong Kong has done.
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The interval between two doses have also been reduced from six to eight weeks to four weeks to accelerate efforts at opening up. Jeremy Lim, associate professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health under the National University of Singapore, told Bloomberg that the island nation needs its open borders to survive. “Singapore cannot and will not remain closed. Open borders and trade are our lifeblood,”
Singapore reported five new cases of coronavirus on Tuesday, all were linked to cases of earlier infections, reported Bloomberg. The city-state has successfully tackled infection rates and reported 36 fatalities so far.
