Singapore Ban Unvaccinated from entering Shopping Mall

The inevitable ban finally arrives when Singapore announces that unvaccinated cannot “enter shopping malls or dine-in at hawker centres and coffee shops from Wednesday (Oct 13).” This will be seen as the final push to get the population vaccinated from COVID-19. It is another measures to help elevate the strain on medical services. Will this helps in place of testing? This will cry foul as unvaccinated people becomes alienated.

Differentiation instead of lockdown?

Many questions why fairness of differentiation vs lockdown. These messages only make it hard for people to live with COVID-19 normally. The new normal are slowly evolving into the following:

• Mask wearing
• Vaccination
• Frequent COVID-19 testing
• Home recovery
• Ban for unvaccinated

Despite these normals, cases remains high. One reason could be due to home recovery. This is because one family members got COVID-19, it is likely entire family will get it as well.

Cat and Mouse

The measures will need to go at some point because it is a cat and mouse game of COVID-19 and the vaccines. Israel surge is a case study for all as this is a never ending game. We should either go all in or brake slowly. This will avoid unnecessary U-turn measures that only adds fear to public. Lesson learnt shows that healthcare system will face the brunt if the rate of reopening is too soon.

As we comes into the phase of differentiation by vaccination as predicted, certain measures are now tune to relief the healthcare system. It is now clear that gradual reopening should be done and we must not be complacent about being vaccinated. The fight must goes on but “more haste, less speed”!