Singapore eases COVID-19 social curbs from Monday

SINGAPORE: Singapore's government said on Saturday it would ease social curbs imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19 as infections have stabilised in the city-state over the past month.

From Monday, limits on social interactions and dining out will be expanded to five people from the current rule of up to two vaccinated people, government ministers told a news conference.

They said the overall infection numbers and hospital situation have largely stabilised and improved.

"We are now transiting towards living with COVID-19," Gan Kim Yong, minister for trade and industry, told reporters. "I know many or some prefer to open up more quickly but we must do so in a very careful and step-by-step manner."

"This means that we will ease some measures, observe, monitor and ensure the situation continues to be under control and stabilised before easing further," he said.

Singapore's daily COVID-19 cases have fallen below 3,000 on average. About 85% of the island nation's 5.45 million people have been vaccinated.

The number of infections fell to 1,734 cases on Friday from a record daily count of 5,324 in late October.

"The week-on-week ratio of community cases has remained stable at around 0.8 to 1.0 this past week," the health ministry said in a statement.