Weekly rostered testing for public bus drivers part of tightened measures to curb Covid-19 spread
SINGAPORE – Bus drivers and staff manning service counters at bus interchanges will have to undergo routine testing at least once a week from now, as part of tightened measures to reduce Covid-19 transmission.
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) on Thursday (Sept 2) announced stricter rules for shared spaces at interchanges as well – only one staff member is allowed to sit at each table at dining areas. Canteens are no longer open for the public to dine-in, although they will still be able to buy food to go.
Staff resting and dining areas at bus interchanges will also be segregated, to separate those who want to rest with their masks on from those who are eating.
The measures, which cover more than 11,000 front-line staff in the bus sector, come in the wake of growing Covid-19 clusters at eight public bus interchanges, with 314 cases as at Wednesday.
By next week, all bus interchanges will be installed with air purifiers. Smoking areas will have physical separators set up so smokers can no longer interact with one another.
The frequency of the cleaning of high-touch points at staff areas will also be increased to once every hour.
At a briefing on the clusters, the LTA said there is no major impact on bus operations for now.
But it added that there are contingency plans in place to lengthen the intervals between bus services – starting with routes with the lowest demand – if the clusters at bus interchanges continue to grow.
This could translate to longer waiting time for commuters, which have already been reported at Jurong East bus interchange. The Straits Times understands that one or two services have already been affected.
Of the 314 coronavirus cases linked to bus interchanges, 284 are front-line workers in bus interchanges – drivers and service staff – with the rest comprising their household members and members of the public.
ST understands that the authorities have not definitively established links between the bus interchange clusters, mostly due to the similarity of virus profiles between bus drivers and the public.
It is unclear how the first bus staff member got the virus, but there are links between bus staff at shared areas.
About half of the bus service staff who have tested positive were found through proactive testing.
“No one has fallen seriously ill,” the LTA said, attributing this to high vaccination rates.
To date, 99 per cent of bus front-line staff have received a dose of a vaccine. A total of 95 per cent have completed both doses.
Labour MP Melvin Yong, who is executive secretary of the National Transport Workers’ Union, said those who got infected have only mild or no symptoms so far, and are recovering well.
The union will continue to stay in contact with them and those who have been quarantined, and is working closely with the LTA and transport operators to curb the spread of the virus, he added.
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