The use of the Safe Entry and Trace Together app will not be phased out so soon, Senior Minister of State for Health Janil Puthucheary said in Parliament on Thursday (March 3).

Janil was responding to a question posed by Member of Parliament for Aljunied GRC, Leon Perera, who asked what criteria the Ministry of Health would use to decide when to phase out the use of Safe Entry and Trace Together.

Perera noted the compliance burden for Safe Entry and Trace Together is not "insignificant".

Benefits outweigh costs

Janil said that while there is a compliance burden, the ability of Trace Together to "issue health risk warnings and notices very quickly" in the face of a very rapidly progressing pandemic is an important public health measure.

Trace Together, Safe Entry and vaccine differentiated measures have helped keep Singapore's fatality rate low. Singapore was able to slow down the spread and allow people to self-isolate and seek medical help very early on in the illness, Janil added.

Therefore, such beneficial outcomes outweigh the compliance cost and burden of Safe Entry and Trace Together.

Janil also cited a study from the U.K. which looked at how this automated contact tracing approach saves lives and prevent Covid-19 cases.

"The study that was done in the U.K. if we extrapolate that approach to our situation here. The estimate is that between September 2021 and January 2022, comparing similar data sets over about those four, five months. The contact tracing approach that we've taken in Singapore may have saved about 290 deaths and slowed down the progression to avoid about 144,000 cases."

Too early to tell when to phase out

Janil is it is "a bit too early to tell" when Singapore can phase out the use of Safe Entry and Trace Together.

"We need to wait until we no longer need vaccine differentiated measures. We need to make sure, wait until we're quite sure that the pandemic and Covid-19 is no longer epidemic, but is endemic," Janil added that Singapore had not reached that point yet.

Until then, he said the "easiest", least burdensome and "cheapest" way for businesses for now is to continue with the Safe Entry and Trace Together systems rather than setting up a "whole new system" in order to get those outcomes.

"So when we no longer need those measures. Then we will stand down the system."

Top image by Nigel Chua