The government has maintained some of the world’s strictest curbs against Covid transmission. It announced in June that it would be abandoning its zero-Covid strategy — a shift that was possible thanks to the country’s high vaccination rate. About 82 percent of the population was fully vaccinated as of Friday.
Only those who are fully vaccinated, have recovered from Covid-19 in the past 270 days, are pregnant or are medically ineligible for the vaccines will be allowed to work in person without daily tests, the health ministry said.
About 96 percent of Singapore’s work force has been fully vaccinated, the trade minister, Gan Kim Yong, said at a news conference on Saturday. About 113,000 workers remained unvaccinated, he said, and more than 10 percent were older workers.
“We would like to seek the assistance of employers in encouraging their unvaccinated employees to get vaccinated as soon as possible,” he said.
Even with one of the best vaccination rates in the world, the number of new coronavirus cases have been higher than ever in recent weeks, with two-thirds of Singapore’s intensive care capacity in use.