Istana cancels open house on 13 May amid spike in COVID-19 community cases

The President’s Office on Tuesday (4 May) said that it has cancelled the Istana Open House, which was slated to take place on 13 May, following a spike in the COVID-19 community cases.

This came a week after it was announced that the Istana will be reopening its grounds to the public by having a combined open house to celebrate Labour Day and Hari Raya Puasa on 13 May, which would be its first open house since closing due to the pandemic in February last year.

“With the further easing of community measures in Phase 3 of re-opening, the Istana will be reopening the grounds for IOH (Istana open house) in stages and with safe management measures in place,” said the President’s Office.

In a statement earlier today, the office said that it has decided to “err on the side of caution” by calling off the event due to the rise in the number of COVID-19 community cases.

The office noted that it looks forward to welcoming visitors again “once the COVID-19 situation has improved”.

Ticket-holders will be able to gain admission to the next open house with the existing tickets.

Singapore recorded the first double-digit daily in months on 29 April, with 16 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, which is a sharp increase from just three cases the day before.

As of Monday (3 May), the city-state reported 10 infections in the community, all of whom are either patients and staff at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) or close contacts of previous cases who had already been placed on quarantine.

MOH to activate various capacity management and load balancing measures

Following the increased number of COVID-19 cases in the community and TTSH, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Monday that it has worked with the public and private hospitals to activate various capacity management and load balancing measures.

“To conserve resources across the healthcare sector, MOH has asked all hospitals to defer non-urgent surgeries and admissions as well as non-urgent specialist outpatient clinic appointments until further notice. The hospitals will contact the affected patients about these deferments,” said the MOH.

The Ministry noted that some hospitals have started deploying doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals to assist TTSH in caring for their existing patients.

It added that TTSH has progressively ceased admissions of new inpatient cases from Sunday (2 May) onwards until further notice.

The hospital has also implemented further steps to reduce the risk of transmission and free up more manpower to take care of existing patients.

“These measures allow TTSH and the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) to focus its attention on providing appropriate care for patients who are presently admitted, and to deal with the cluster of COVID-19 cases in the hospital,” said the MOH.