More than 50% of primary school students have signed up to get vaccinated: Chan Chun Sing

SINGAPORE: More than half of primary school students have signed up to get vaccinated, said Education Minister Chan Chun Sing on Friday (Jan 7).

"As of now, we have more than 70 per cent of our Primary Four to Primary Six students signed up already. More than one-third of Primary One to Primary Three students have signed up within the last few days." 

Mr Chan was speaking during a visit to Yusof Ishak Secondary School, which is a Ministry of Education (MOE) dedicated paediatric vaccination centre. 

The centre will begin operations on Jan 11, and will open from 10am to 5pm from Tuesday to Saturday. It will be able to vaccinate about 600 children per day.

Taken together, the 15 paediatric vaccination centres islandwide would be able to vaccinate more than 11,000 children daily. 

The vaccination centre at Yusof Ishak Secondary School is the only one in Singapore that solely administers paediatric vaccinations, which means the general public aged 12 and above cannot get their jabs at this centre.

As lessons in the school are ongoing, vaccination centre staff will help to manage human traffic and minimise the intermingling between members of the public and students in the school.

For instance, only one parent per child or sibling group is allowed into the school grounds to accompany their children.

EXPERIENCED STAFF

Compared to other vaccination centres across the island, the unique feature of the one at Yusof Ishak Secondary School is that all staff managing the centre are from the Health Promotion Board, said Mr Chan. 

"And they're also the people who've been managing the school vaccination for our children throughout the years, so they're very experienced," he added. 

The centre at Yusof Ishak Secondary School will also administer vaccination shots for siblings, under the sibling walk-in arrangement that begins on Jan 10. 

Under this arrangement, walk-ins will be accepted for all accompanying siblings of a child with a prior COVID-19 vaccination appointment from Mondays to Thursdays. Those who intend to vaccinate their children or wards under the sibling walk-in arrangement should arrive at the vaccination centre by 7pm.

The sibling walk-in arrangement is currently unavailable from Fridays to Sundays due to high demand in appointment bookings for the next few weekends, said MOE and ECDA earlier in January. 

With Chinese New Year on the way, Mr Chan hoped that parents would sign up their medically eligible children as soon as possible. 

"Chinese New Year is coming, so I'm quite sure there will be quite a lot of intermingling during that period. So we want to keep our children safe. And we also want our children to play a part in keeping their families safe," he said.