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Singapore Airport to Tighten Rules to Curb Virus Spread: Today - BLOOMBERG
BY , Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- Singapore’s Changi Airport will impose stricter measures at its terminals in a bid to safeguard against further coronavirus transmissions after concluding investigations into an earlier outbreak, Today reported.
The airport will separate staff handling both incoming and outgoing travelers into various zones and will implement stringent movement controls between these areas, Changi Airport Group Singapore Pte. Chief Executive Lee Siow Hiang was cited as saying. The new measures are targeted to be fully in place by June 13, according to the report.
Singapore currently has 32 active virus clusters with the one at Changi Airport being the country’s largest with 108 linked cases as of Sunday, according to the ministry’s data.
Here are more details about the new safety measures, which will apply to about 14,000 workers at the airport’s terminals:
- All arriving passengers will be separated from departing travelers in respective zones.
- Staff working in each zone will be prohibited from mingling with staff in other zones.
- Workers in the highest-risk zone, Zone 1, must wear protective personal equipment at all times.
- Only fully vaccinated staff will be rostered for duty in the highest risk zone.
- Routine rostered daily testing for staff in the highest-risk zone will be shortened, with one polymerase chain reaction test every seven days and one antigen rapid test every three days.
- The group will work toward conducting daily non-invasive tests for all airport workers in Zone 1, which yield test results in minutes.
Passengers from “very high-risk countries” will also be escorted to remote gates in Terminal 2 for immigration clearance and transport to their quarantine facilities, without passing through the other terminals, according to the report.
Singapore has been racing to contain a new wave of infections in recent weeks and has pledged to increase testing and surveillance in a bid to ring-fence transmissions. The country preliminarily confirmed 24 new cases of locally transmitted Covid-19 infection as of 12 p.m. on Monday, two of which are untraceable.
