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Home recovery is "now the safe, default option for the majority of Covid-19 patients", the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in a press release on Saturday, Oct. 23.

This was following an extension of the Home Recovery Programme (HRP) to more demographic groups starting from Oct. 10, with the exception of a few groups, which was announced on Oct. 9.

Home recovery programme's enrolment criteria expanded

The HRP will be extended to "fully vaccinated pregnant Covid-19 patients who are below 35 years and are less than 26 weeks pregnant", the ministry said.

This decision is taken "as more of us become familiar and comfortable with HRP, and our onboarding processes and medical support structures become more established", they added.

"These patients would be clinically assessed at selected hospitals to be suitable for home recovery before commencing HRP," MOH further explained.

In addition, to "augment the capacity" of Singapore's public hospitals, MOH said they will continue to onboard more GPs to provide telemonitoring support for those on HRP, private sector hospitals to "expand overall hospital bed capacity to manage Covid and non-Covid patients, and stand up Covid-19 Treatment Facilities".

Progress under Vaccination Booster Programme

MOH took stock of the progress made under the Vaccination Booster Programme as well.

The programme was commenced on Oct. 3 for persons aged 50 to 59 years, in addition to those aged 60 years and above who had started receiving their booster doses in September.

As of Oct. 21, 655,029 individuals have received their booster dose, MOH said.

Furthermore, 82 per cent of individuals aged 50 to 59 years and 79 per cent of seniors aged 60 years and above, who are eligible for their booster dose, have either booked an appointment or already received their booster dose.

Since Oct. 9, MOH started booster vaccinations of healthcare workers, as well as frontline workers who completed their primary series vaccination regimen around six months ago.

They also started inviting persons aged 30 years and above who have completed their primary series vaccination regimen around six months ago to make an appointment for their booster dose.

They noted that as of Oct. 21, they have invited about 190,000 persons aged 30 to 49 years to book an appointment for their booster dose, and that about 138,000 (or 72 per cent of those invited) have since booked an appointment.

Top image via Unsplash

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