Singapore — Makansutra founder KF Seetoh took to social media to point out that despite the majority of the population being fully vaccinated, the government still has not relaxed Covid-19 regulations.
In a Facebook post on Thursday (Aug 26), Mr Seetoh wrote: “Have they forgotten to loosen the HAP2 status because a VIP was in town and forgot about the little people”.
He added that it was ironic that the rules only allowed two per group at Hawker centres and food courts, but allowed groups of five at indoor air-conditioned food courts. “As if circulated indoor air is much better,” he wrote.
The advocate for all things hawker, Mr Seetoh said that for every additional day the two-person rule existed, hawkers were denied the opportunity to earn a little extra and pay their bills. He noted that this was especially significant for those who relied on foot traffic. Mr Seetoh added that he stopped keeping count after over 150 small hawkers went belly-up last year.
“It’s quite devastating on the ground but no media or politician really delves into the real damage such easy to implement lockdown measures are really doing to the industry. “There can never be herd immunity” some high salaried leader said too,” Mr Seetoh wrote.
”So folks brace yourself for further lockdowns in anticipation of this recent unexplained rise in local cases..perhaps, till we reach 99.9% vaxxed status,” he added in his Facebook post.
76 per cent of the total Singapore population have been fully vaccinated as of Aug 16. This is around 4.3 million people. In the last week, around 53,000 additional people were fully vaccinated per day on average.
Singapore reported 112 new locally transmitted COVID-19 infections as of noon on Thursday (Aug 26), including 40 linked to the growing Bugis Junction cluster.
Of the remaining 72 locally transmitted cases, 31 were linked to previous cases and had been placed in quarantine, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) in its preliminary daily update. Another 17 linked infections were detected through surveillance testing.
Twenty-four infections were not linked to previous cases.
There were also four imported cases, taking Singapore daily case count to 116. /TISG