Singapore to enter Phase 3 of reopening in two weeks

Capacity limit in public places will be eased up to eight people.

Singapore will enter the Phase 3 of reopening on 28 December, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his televised speech on 14 December.

Lee noted that whilst the Singaporean economy has taken a big hit, it did not crash. He also discussed the country’s progress in battling COVID-19.

“We have steadily built up our testing capacities and procedures. We introduced rostered routine testing of higher risk groups. We started using antigen rapid tests to resume larger gatherings and events safely. We also beefed up our contact tracing capabilities, for example, expanding our SafeEntry and TraceTogether programmes, and distributing TraceTogether tokens,” he said.

As the country enters Phase 3, capacity limits in public places would be eased. “One significant change is to allow groups of up to eight to congregate, up from the current maximum of five,” Lee said.

The Prime Minister emphasised that trade and travel were Singapore’s lifeblood. He said that the longer the borders stay closed, “the greater the risk of us permanently losing out as an international hub, and consequently hurting our livelihoods." To solve this, Singapore would reopen its borders in a controlled and safe manner.

A surge in imported cases would be expected, but Lee said the government will take every precaution and do its best to mitigate a new outbreak.

The progression from Phase 2 to Phase 3 is a “calibrated, careful move,” according to Lee.

Furthermore, the first shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine would be arriving by the end of December. Other vaccines were expected to arrive in Singapore in the following months.

“If all goes according to plan, we will have enough vaccines for everyone in Singapore by the third quarter of 2021,” Lee said.