New restrictions could be implemented by the authorities ahead of this year’s Chinese New Year, said co-chair of the COVID-19 multi-ministry taskforce Lawrence Wong on Thursday (Jan 21).

This is due to the fact that more intermingling is expected during Chinese New Year, as well as the increase in community cases in Singapore of late. 

While Mr Wong did not provide further details into what these restrictions may entail, he said that the authorities are still in the midst of studying the kind of measures that could be introduced and will announce them when ready.  

Mr Wong added that COVID-19 clusters have also been reported in Singapore for the first time in a while and could be attributed to the higher number of interactions during the year-end festivities.    

There were 38 new COVID-19 cases reported on Thursday, of which four were in the community.

Meanwhile, Mr Wong also said that the Government’s plan is to roll out available vaccine supplies to Singaporeans and long-term residents of Singapore as soon as possible.

This means not reserving supplies for those who adopt a ‘wait-and-see’ approach, he added. 

“If you want to wait, you must accept the consequence that perhaps later if the vaccine supply has been taken up, and you want to take it up later on, you may not have the ready supply,” Mr Wong said.  

Should all go according to plan, there will be enough COVID-19 vaccines for Singaporeans and long-term residents of Singapore by the third quarter of 2021. 

To date, only the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been approved in Singapore. More COVID-19 vaccines are expected to arrive in Singapore in the coming months, and they include those manufactured by Moderna and Sinovac.