The Big Story: 4 Covid-19 vaccination centres to close by end of Sept

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SINGAPORE - Catch up on the hottest topics on The Straits Times' weekday talk show.

The Big Story, broadcast every weekday at 5.30pm on Facebook and YouTube, has reporters and senior editors discussing the top stories of the day.

The show is helmed by multimedia correspondent Hairianto Diman and assistant video editor Olivia Quay, and airs live from ST's digital studio.

With 79 per cent of Singapore's population fully vaccinated against Covid-19 as at Aug 25, the Health Ministry said on Friday (Aug 27) that it will close four out of 37 mass vaccination centres. Vaccination operations will shift to regular healthcare providers, Public Health Preparedness Clinics, and mobile and home vaccination teams.

However, the daily number of locally transmitted Covid-19 cases have jumped into the hundreds since Aug 24. Professor Dale Fisher, senior consultant at National University Hospital's Division of Infectious Diseases, discusses the trends we have been seeing in the past week.

In other local news, liberal arts institution Yale-NUS College will stop accepting new students with the current freshmen intake being its final cohort. Yale-NUS will merge with NUS' University Scholars Programme to form a new college, which will open by August 2022.

Singapore on Friday strongly condemned the bombings outside Afghanistan's Kabul airport that killed dozens of people and injured hundreds more. "These acts of violence are deplorable and cannot be justified," said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in a statement.

Across the Causeway, Malaysia's new prime minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob unveiled his Cabinet on Friday. Former Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin will be helming the Ministry of Health to deal with the country's raging Covid-19 crisis . The other key portfolios of defence, finance, education and home affairs will continue to be led by the same ministers as the previous administration. Mr Ismail has also left the deputy premiership post empty.

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