Visits to hospital wards will not be allowed from today to Aug 18 to reduce the potential transmission of Covid-19 there.

The move comes after more community cases, including staff and patients of hospitals, were detected recently.

Covid-19 clusters have emerged at Changi General Hospital (CGH) and Yishun Community Hospital since Sunday.

The Ministry of Health (MOH) said yesterday that four patient groups will be exempted from these restrictions on a conditional and case-by-case basis.

They include very ill patients, those who are babies or children, as well as mothers who are due to give birth or have delivered.

Also exempted are patients requiring additional care support from caregivers, such as those helping patients with mental incapacities and family members who are undergoing caregiver training.

These groups of patients can have one visitor each day for no more than 30 minutes at the patient's bedside.

MOH said: "For patients who are very ill, up to five pre-designated visitors may be registered, with a maximum of two visitors at the patient's bedside at any one time of no more than 30 minutes' visit duration."

Visitors who need to stay beyond 30 minutes for reasons like caregiver training will be allowed only after testing negative on a supervised antigen rapid test.

MOH reported 92 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases yesterday, of which 54 were linked to previous cases and already quarantined.

There were 30 unlinked cases.

Twelve new clusters were also reported, taking the total number of clusters to 112.

Of the active clusters, 95 were clusters linked to individual cases ranging between three and 76 cases.

The rest were clusters associated with premises, including Punggol Primary School.

Visitors to hospitals have been told not to use patients' toilets, sit on their beds, or eat or drink in in-patient wards.

They must also don face masks with good filtration capability at all times.

All unvaccinated patients will be approached by hospital staff to get the Covid-19 vaccine if their condition permits.

Those who have received their first dose at the hospital are advised to return to the same hospital for their second dose, MOH said.

It had announced a cluster of four cases at Yishun Community Hospital on Sunday.

A new cluster of three cases was also reported at CGH on Tuesday.

CGH said yesterday that the three new patient cases were not linked to the previous cluster of 20 cases.

The recent wave of infections follows Singapore's first hospital cluster at Tan Tock Seng Hospital in April, which led to it locking down four wards.

While the number of clusters has crossed 100, experts said it is not a cause for alarm.

They added that the number of clusters will rise with the number of cases, and the growing vaccination rate will be a defence.

The Temasek Foundation also announced that each household will get medical-grade surgical masks and N95 respirator masks at the end of the month or early next month.