The senior minister of state for health Janil Puthucheary said in Parliament earlier today that the use of Safe Entry and Trace Together will not be phased out anytime soon.
He was asked by Leon Perera, the MP for Aljunied, about what criteria would the MOH use to decide when to phase out Safe Entry and Trace Together, noting that the burden of using them is not “insignificant”.
Janil answered by saying that while there is a burden of compliance, Trace Together can issue health risk warning and notices very quickly and is an important public health measure.
Both Trace Together and Safe entry, along with the vaccine differentiated measures, have helped to keep the fatality rate of the pandemic in Singapore low, slowing down the spread and letting people isolate themselves and get medical attention in the early onset of the virus; the benefits outweigh the compliance burden.
Janil added that it is a bit too early to tell when Singapore can phase out the use of the two, and that we need to wait until we no longer need vaccine differentiated measures and wait until we are quite sure that the pandemic is endemic.
He further added that Singapore is not at that stage yet, and until then, the easiest and cheapest way for business for now is to continue with both systems, instead of setting up a whole new system.
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