Singapore — On Wednesday morning (Nov 10), lawyer and opposition leader Lim Tean asked in a Facebook post why it was not made clear to the public that a person’s fully vaccinated status expires one year and 14 days after they receive their second dose.
“Did You Know That Your Fully Vaccinated Status Expires 1 Year 14 Days After Your 2nd Dose????
Why did the PAP government not make this clear to the public previously!”
His question had been sparked by an opinion piece in the Straits Times Forum by Ms Lynn Tan, which was also published on Nov 10.
In it, she said she wondered how many Singapore residents are aware “that the Government has mandated that a person’s fully vaccinated status expires 365 plus 14 days after the second dose,” as specified in section 6, subsection 4 of the Infectious Diseases (Mass Gathering Testing for Coronavirus Disease 2019) Regulations 2021.
She went on to ask if the one-year expiry date should have been made explicit by the Ministry of Health, adding that MOH had a chance to do so in Parliament on Oct 4, when a question was raised concerning whether the definition of “fully vaccinated” will be changed.
“This must surely be a matter of public interest. It has major implications for all Singapore residents given the Government’s policy of vaccination-differentiated measures.
More so, it is of concern because the long-term effects of taking yet more jabs against Covid-19 are unknown,” wrote Ms Tan.
She asked whether the government intends everyone to receive booster shots in order to be deemed fully vaccinated, and with the decrease of the booster’s efficacy with time, would Singapore residents again be required to receive another booster.
Ms Tan ended her piece by expressing the hope that “MOH will make public why it has regulated an expiry date for each person’s ‘fully vaccinated’ status; how the one-year period was chosen; and what will happen when a person’s fully vaccinated status expires.”
Mr Lim added, “So it appears that people have to take more jabs in future! … I have checked the regulations and Lynn is absolutely correct on this!”
However, a look into what Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said on Oct 4 in Parliament shows that he addressed the issue of “expiring vaccination status.”
MP Yip Hon Weng (PAP-Yio Chu Kang) asked whether the definition of “fully vaccinated” would change for those who have taken the booster shot and how this would reflect in the TraceTogether app.
The Health Minister replied, “We are administering boosters in good time, and so the issue of expiring vaccination status has not arisen. But in time, this is an issue that we will need to review.”
In a response to Ms Tan’s letter on Nov 11 (Thursday), MOH reiterated Mr Ong’s point.
The response from Dr Derrick Heng, MOH’s deputy director of medical services for the public health group, was also published in The Straits Times Forum.
“As these studies are ongoing, when enacting the regulations earlier, we had in the interim specified a duration of (one year)… to allow persons who have completed the primary series of their vaccinations to be exempted from vaccination-differentiated safe management measures,” he said.
He added that as more data becomes available, the Expert Committee on Covid-19 Vaccination will review the evidence and make recommendations, and then MOH will review the timeframe had given. /TISG