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Individuals who have received the full regimen of Chinese biopharmaceutical company Sinovac's CoronoVac vaccine will be eligible for certain activities open to fully vaccinated people in Singapore, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in a press release on Friday, Aug. 6.

Fully-vaccinated two weeks after receiving full regimen

From Aug. 10, individuals who have completed the full regimen of vaccination with vaccines listed on the World Health Organisation’s Emergency Use Listing (WHO EUL), such as Sinovac-CoronaVac, Sinopharm, and AstraZeneca, will be eligible for the differentiated safe management measures.

This means that an individual will be considered “fully-vaccinated” two weeks after they received the full regimen of any WHO EUL vaccines, in addition to the Pfizer-BioNTech/Comirnaty and Moderna vaccines.

As such, these individuals, who have a "good protection against the risk of infection or severe illnesses", will be able to engage in a wider range of activities, MOH said.

Unvaccinated individuals will need to exercise tighter safe management measures to protect themselves and those around them.

Vaccine-differentiated safe management measures

These vaccine-differentiated safe management measures include an increase in social gathering group size from two to five persons, and participation in groups of five in higher-risk activities where masks are removed, such as F&B dine-in.

MOH added that unvaccinated individuals with a valid negative pre-event test result or recovered individuals are of a similarly lower risk, and they may also join in such groups of up to five.

The decision was made after taking into account Singapore's higher vaccination coverage under its national vaccination programme, and as it takes an inclusive approach in recognising Covid-19 vaccines in the WHO EUL, the press release stated.

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Top image via Noel Celis/AFP/Getty Images