Forum: Revise limit on family visitation

Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said there will be some flexibility for households to visit parents, in-laws and grandparents after the circuit breaker ends on June 1, adding that seniors should not leave their houses to visit family members, and should
Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said there will be some flexibility for households to visit parents, in-laws and grandparents after the circuit breaker ends on June 1, adding that seniors should not leave their houses to visit family members, and should continue to stay at home. ST PHOTO: KUA CHEE SIONG

As a grandparent, I am dismayed by the Government's decision to limit visits by family members to two individuals at a time (Visits to parents, grandparents to be allowed within limits, May 20).

It would make far more sense to control the number of visitors by household, rather than the number of persons.

I very much appreciate the need to limit contact in order to keep communal spread of Covid-19 under control. However, a limit by numbers seems arbitrary.

A given group of visitors is likely to originate from the same household, where all members are likely to have the same infected or non-infected status due to living in the same house and having close contact throughout the circuit breaker period.

Thus, the risk of transmitting the coronavirus does not seem to vary significantly with the number of individuals present, so long as members from only two households - the hosts' and the visitors' - are present at any time.

The limit is also prejudicial to larger families. One imagines a scenario in which young children are kept from visiting their grandparents, since only two persons - one grandchild out of two or more siblings, and one parent chaperone - may make the trip.

Building on my previous point concerning viral transmission, this would cause great emotional distress for virtually no public health benefit.

Paul Chan Poh Hoi

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on May 23, 2020, with the headline Forum: Revise limit on family visitation. Subscribe