SINGAPORE - More people are adhering to safe distancing measures, with fewer than 70 people caught flouting these rules on Tuesday (April 28), said Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Masagos Zulkifli.

About the same number of people were also caught for not wearing masks outside their homes, he said in an update on Facebook.

About a week ago, Mr Masagos had said that 150 people were nabbed for breaching safe distancing measures last Wednesday, while 50 people were caught for not wearing masks in public.

On Tuesday, he said there are early signs that the elevated circuit breaker measures, put in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus, are starting to work.

"The daily case numbers in our local community are slowly coming down. We must press on, to bring these numbers down further," he said.

Mr Masagos reiterated that some of the restrictions to reduce movement in Singapore "may be eased when the situation gets better".

"Until then, let us all do our very best to stay home and comply with the tighter measures," he said.

Little to no queues were seen at four popular markets which, since last Wednesday, only allowed patrons to enter on alternate days of the week, based on the last digit of their NRIC or Foreign Identification Number (FIN).

Enforcement of this began last Friday, in which shoppers who came on the wrong day were turned away.

At the time, the National Environment Agency said that across the four markets, queues were shorter on Friday morning compared with the two days prior, ranging from no queues to queues of about 20 people.

The agency added that just over 400 people, or about 5 per cent of the crowd who visited the markets from 7am to 10am on Friday, were turned away.

Mr Masagos said that the figure was less than 5 per cent on Tuesday.