With widespread local spread, it has become less useful, says MOH
By
Jessica Jaganathan
The thermal scanners went up about 2-1/2 months ago. -- ST PHOTO: LIM SIN THAI
TEMPERATURE screening at the border checkpoints here will cease on Saturday. The thermal scanners in use at airports and ferry terminals are among the last measures left over from what the authorities called the 'containment phase' in the battle against the Influenza A (H1N1) virus.
The scanners went up about 2-1/2 months ago, when news emerged that a deadly new strain of swine flu had, by that time, killed more than 80 people in Mexico.
Little was known about the bug then, and the focus was on stopping it at Singapore's borders. Passengers arriving here with higher-than-normal temperatures were sidelined and sent for medical checks.
But on Friday, the Health Ministry (MOH) and Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that the virus had spread globally and was also in the community here, so temperature screening at the borders here was 'now less useful'.
With most other containment measures already having been dropped, hospitals and other medical facilities are the last bastion where 'containment phase' measures are still in place.
Singapore is now shifting from focusing on containing the virus to mitigating it. Resources will now be put into treating those seriously ill.
It is not clear what measures will remain when the nation moves fully into the 'mitigation' phase.
A Health Ministry spokesman told The Straits Times earlier that it will give fuller details of such measures in time. For now, it is monitoring the situation and the prevalence of H1N1 cases.
MOH's director of medical services K. Satku said in an earlier press conference that Singapore would move from the containment stage to the mitigation stage when the proportion of H1N1 cases in the sample of people with flu-like symptoms hits 15 per cent. The proportion is now at 13 per cent.
Among the containment measures, the first to go was the quarantining of airline passengers seated near an individual who develops symptoms. Travel advisories, home quarantine orders and contact tracing - except in hospital settings - have also been done away with.
Read the full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times
