KTV COVID cluster: Singapore suspends over 400 nightlife establishments for 2 weeks

Bernama
July 16, 2021 20:48 MYT

Singapore will implement a two-week suspension of operations from today through July 30, 2021 for over 400 nightlife establishments that had pivoted into food beverages (FB) establishments. - Facebook photo

SINGAPORE: Singapore will implement a two-week suspension of operations from today through July 30, 2021 for over 400 nightlife establishments that had pivoted into food beverages (FB) establishments

This is following the detection a number of clusters in multiple KTV lounges or nightclubs, according to the republic's Multi-Ministry Taskforce (MTF) on COVID-19 today.

As at 12 noon today, the republic's Ministry of Health (MOH) has preliminarily confirmed 53 new cases of locally transmitted COVID-19 infection of which 32 belong to the KTV cluster.

With the 32 new cases, it brings the total caseload for that cluster to 120 just over a week.

Singapore had previously announced a calibrated path for resumption of more economic and social activities under Phase 3 (Heightened Alert) from July 12, 2021 onwards.

However, it will depend heavily on its population vaccination rate, and it aimed to have two-thirds of its population complete the vaccination regimen by National Day.

At a virtual press conference today, the MTF co-chair Gan Kim Yong described the new infection clusters that emerged as "a major setback in our journey to recovery".

"We must respond to this emerging cluster quickly especially to protect those who have not yet been vaccinated completely," said Gan who is also the Trade and Industry Minister.

To mitigate further community spread, Singapore will tighten community safe management measures (SMMs) for higher-risk indoor, mask-off settings with effect from July 19 through Aug 8.

An unvaccinated person who has a valid negative pre-event test (PET) result for the duration of his dining-in; or a child aged 12 years and below; may also join in such groups of five.

An individual is considered fully-vaccinated two weeks after he or she has received two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech (Comirnaty) or Moderna vaccines.

-- BERNAMA

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