The Ministry of Health (MOH) has announced that it will expand home recovery as the default care management protocol for more fully vaccinated individuals starting on Wednesday (15 Sep).
In a statement last Friday (10 Sep), MOH noted that this is in line with the evidence that fully vaccinated individuals are mostly showing mild symptoms or none infected with the COVID-19 at all.
“We started the Home Recovery Pilot on 30 August 2021, for fully vaccinated COVID-19 individuals infected with COVID-19 to recover from home, provided that they have a suitable home setting where they can be isolated from the rest of their household,” it said.
Under the pilot, their household members must be fully vaccinated and not belong to any vulnerable groups – such as the elderly or immunocompromised – and they will be equipped with care packs and given access to 24/7 telemedicine support.
According to The Straits Times’ (ST) report, household members who are close contacts of the patients will also be put under home quarantine, and are required to adhere to requirements such as staying home at all times.
MOH noted that 21 individuals have been enrolled on the pilot, of which nine individuals have been discharged as of 9 Sep and the rest remain clinically well.
“Given the encouraging pilot results, we will expand home recovery as the default care management protocol for more fully vaccinated individuals from 15 September 2021,” it stated.
The Ministry said that the scheme will be extended progressively to individuals up to 50 years old who have no significant co-morbidities or underlying illnesses.
“Once notified of their COVID-19 positive results, these individuals should immediately self-isolate at home,” it added.
MOH further said that it will now allow and encourage parents to bring their infected children home, if they are at least 5 years old and do not have co-morbidities or underlying illnesses.
“For these children, they will first be assessed by the hospital to be clinically fit for home recovery, before sending them back home for their recovery journey,” it asserted.
MOH has also shortened the length of isolation for fully vaccinated COVID-19 cases since 7 Sep, given the evidence showed that vaccinated COVID-19 cases recover faster than unvaccinated cases.
“These cases may be discharged as early as seven days into their illness if they have undetectable or very low viral loads, showing that they are non-infectious. Unvaccinated persons will continue to be discharged 14 days into their illness,” it stated.
Netizens not on board with the scheme being expanded to more people
A look through the comments section of ST’s Facebook post on the matter reveals that many netizens are not on board with the scheme being expanded to more fully vaccinated people, as they noted that this will risk having the whole family in the house to be infected.
Several of them called the scheme the “stupidest” and “worst policy” that MOH has ever made, especially now that the number of community cases is still increasing.
One netizen wrote: “This home recovery scheme is by far the stupidest I’ve ever heard of from a ministry. Instead of quarantine one person, you’re risking infecting the whole family, plus the whole family have to be quarantined together and will be out of work for that period..”
“The worst policy ever so the infected stay home to infect the rest of family? HDB is so small even have different rooms or eat seperately also need to use same toilet which can spread. N whole family quarantine who go buy food not everyone got money for delivery. Now they want save the hotel cost don’t care if they make the whole family infected. So irresponsible,” said another netizen.
