Janil Puthucheary on COVID-19 vaccinations, Ong Ye Kung on easing healthcare load
As of Feb 9, a thousand individuals who completed the primary course of non-mRNA vaccines would have lost their fully vaccinated status by the deadline of Feb 14. Senior Minister of State for Health Janil Puthucheary gave this update in reply to Parliamentary questions on Tuesday (Feb 15). He said the Health Ministry is working to bring in other non-mRNA options for those who are medically ineligible. He hopes that the initial doses of the Novavax vaccine will arrive in Singapore within months, provided there are no disruptions to the shipment schedule. In response to a question on how healthcare workers are coping amid the Omicron wave, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said what is important is not so much the top-line infection numbers, but the severity of cases and impact on healthcare capacity. By and large, the healthcare system is coping well, he said. Mr Ong said the pressure now is not on the clinical side, but the operational side of healthcare, as the number of calls from patients to hotlines is increasing. He said more will be done to support community General Practitioner (GP) clinics in managing the surge. Quarantine Treatment Facilities (QTCs) will soon be able to provide supervised ART tests and ingest positive records into the HealthHub mobile app. Mr Ong hopes that this will direct the very mild cases from GP clinics to the QTCs to ease the operational challenge.
As of Feb 9, a thousand individuals who completed the primary course of non-mRNA vaccines would have lost their fully vaccinated status by the deadline of Feb 14. Senior Minister of State for Health Janil Puthucheary gave this update in reply to Parliamentary questions on Tuesday (Feb 15). He said the Health Ministry is working to bring in other non-mRNA options for those who are medically ineligible. He hopes that the initial doses of the Novavax vaccine will arrive in Singapore within months, provided there are no disruptions to the shipment schedule. In response to a question on how healthcare workers are coping amid the Omicron wave, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said what is important is not so much the top-line infection numbers, but the severity of cases and impact on healthcare capacity. By and large, the healthcare system is coping well, he said. Mr Ong said the pressure now is not on the clinical side, but the operational side of healthcare, as the number of calls from patients to hotlines is increasing. He said more will be done to support community General Practitioner (GP) clinics in managing the surge. Quarantine Treatment Facilities (QTCs) will soon be able to provide supervised ART tests and ingest positive records into the HealthHub mobile app. Mr Ong hopes that this will direct the very mild cases from GP clinics to the QTCs to ease the operational challenge.
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