Singapore—Tough love seems to be working, for now at least.
The Health Ministry says that in the week after new vaccine-differentiated measures were announced, about 17,000 people signed up for and received their first Covid-19 vaccine shot. And another 162,000 had booster shots.
This was a marked increase from the previous week, when about 11,000 people had their first shots, and 135,000 received booster jabs.
The strategy targeting two of Singaporeans’ favourite things to do — eating and shopping — may be effectively motivating those who were previously hesitant to take the plunge.
The chance to travel may also be working as incentive to nudge hesitant Singaporeans to that shot, with eight countries – Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain , the United Kingdom and the United States – recently added to the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) programme that began in September with just Brunei and Germany.
On Nov 15, South Korea is tdue o set up a musutal VTL with Singapore.
Earlier this month, it was announced that unvaccinated people will not be allowed to eat at restaurants, or visit shopping malls hawker centres, coffee shops, and attractions from Oct 13 onwards.
These curbs were said to have been put in place to prevent the healthcare system from being swamped, as well as to protect unvaccinated people in the community.
Since Oct 9, booster shots have been made available to people who are 30 or older. They had already been approved for people in their 50s from Oct 4; and had been rolled out iback n September for those in their 60s or who are immunocompromised.
Singapore has one of the highest Covid-19 vaccination rates in the world, with MOH noting on Oct 17 that 84 per cent of the population have been fully vaccinated and 85 per cent have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
Among the 780,000 people here eligible for the booster shot, 588,596 have already taken it, and 83,000 have booked their appointments to get the booster jab.
Still, a minority continue to hold out, with “a very angry and oppressed Singaporean” starting a petition to keep malls to open to unvaccinated individuals. That protest speedily racked up almost 6,000 signatures.
“Singapore is a dense-populated island, and most goods and services are concentrated in malls to maximise space usage,” the petitioner noted, asking how “unvaxxed people can be denied of important, including essential goods and services for themselves and their families” in a petition on the change.org platform.
More than 7,350 people had signed the petition before it was taken down on Oct 12. No reason was given.
That inspired another petition calling for protection for unvaccinated Singaporeans was also put up on the platform.
Petitioner Ben Tan wrote, “We are urging to the Singapore government to show compassion towards unvaccinated people and ban them from public transport as well. This will further protect them from the deadly covid-19 virus.” /TISG
S’pore’s unvaccinated sign petition to be allowed in malls, nearly 6,000 signatures received