Singapore — First-time applicants for work passes, long-term passes and permanent residents will be required to be fully vaccinated starting from Feb 1 of next year.
Vaccinations will also be mandatory for those applying to renew their work passes. However, children under the age of 12, as well as those who are medically unfit for the vaccine, are exempted from mandatory vaccination.
“From 1 February 2022, COVID-19 vaccination will be a condition for the approval or grant of new long-term passes, work passes, as well as permanent residence,” the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in a Dec 26 (Sunday) announcement on its website.
The announcement discussed MOH’s adjustments to its approach to the Omicron variant, which had initially been to adopt “a more cautious risk containment approach.”
MOH said this approach has been “effective in delaying the introduction of the variant into our community and slowing local spread,” as well as bought “valuable time to learn about its nature and behaviour based on overseas and local data.”
As of Dec 26, there were 209 new Covid infections in Singapore, 100 of which were imported cases.
Starting Feb 1, 2022, when work pass applications are filed, employers will be required to declare that the holders, as well as their eligible dependents, are fully vaccinated when they arrive in Singapore. They will also be required to submit their vaccination certificates.
If the work pass holders have digitally verifiable certificates, they can upload them to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority’s Vaccination Check Portal. Otherwise, their vaccination documents will be checked before they board airlines or ferries to enter the country.
If they are unable to produce the required documents, they will not be allowed to enter Singapore, The Straits Times reported on Monday, Dec 27.
If they were vaccinated in another country, they need to update their vaccination records in the National Immunisation Registry (NIR) and must produce a positive serology test result taken at a Public Health Preparedness Clinic within 30 days of arrival.
If their serology tests are negative, they need to obtain the full vaccination regimen, otherwise, they face the revoking of their work passes.
These tests indicate whether a person’s body has produced antibodies in response to the Covid vaccine.
MOH announced in its Dec 26 release that while the “Omicron variant is likely to be more transmissible but less severe than the Delta variant… we must expect a new wave of local cases soon.”
“Given the transmissibility of Omicron and the open nature of our society, it is inevitable that Omicron will spread in our community, as it has in over 100 countries already. In the coming days and weeks, we should expect more community cases, and rapid doubling of cases.
This is again a process we need to go through, in order to live with COVID-19. We have done whatever we can to prepare ourselves for it; especially in administering boosters to our population and starting vaccinations for our children. We seek the cooperation and understanding of everyone, as we weather through an Omicron wave in the next one to two months.”
/TISG
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