From this Sunday (May 16) through Sunday, June 13, church worship services will be scaled down to 50 attendees without pre-event testing (PET) and a cap of 100 attendees with testing, down from 250.

This is one of the new measures in the “Phase 2 (Heightened Alert)” announced today (May 14) by the Multi-Ministry Task Force on Covid-19.  

To further mitigate the risk of spread through aerosol transmissions, religious workers and all other participants must wear their masks, not only face shields, at all times.

Live singing and playing of wind instruments will also be suspended during this period.

Marriage solemnisations may continue for up to 100 participants with PET and 50 participants without PET.  In line with the latest measures of no dining-in at F&B establishments, wedding receptions will not be allowed.

“We know that there is one group who will be particularly impacted too, which are wedding couples,” said Minister of Education Lawrence Wong. “Some of them may already have wedding plans for this coming Sunday, and it may be very hard to make last-minute changes.”

Affected couples “can proceed, but we will require them to put in place pre-event testing for all their guests. But this is a special arrangement only for this Sunday because this is a once in a lifetime event for the wedding couples”. 

For funerals, attendance has been reduced to 20, down from the previous limit of 30 people. This is applicable to all days of the funeral, including the wakes/funeral/burial/cremation.

Face shields should not be used as a substitute for mask wear, except for medical exceptions, or where the child is 12 years or younger, or for the marriage couple during the solemnisation of their marriage.

All other on-site religious activities are strongly discouraged.

Other measures include limiting household visitors to two distinct visitors per household per day.

These measures come on the back of a spike in Covid-19 community cases in the past week which saw an increasing number of unlinked cases and the formation of Singapore’s largest cluster of cases to date at Changi Airport. There have been no new cases in the dormitories in the last 10 days.  

A review will be done in two weeks at “the midway point” of the latest measures to determine if further adjustments need to be made, added Minister Lawrence Wong at today’s virtual press conference.

Mr Wong said that the concern relates to any “hidden cases” that may have “leaked out into the community”.

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