'Blunt' Infectious Diseases Act to be amended to reflect range of public health scenarios; Dorscon system to be replaced

SINGAPORE — The Infectious Diseases Act will be amended to address different levels of severity in public health situations without the need to declare a public health emergency, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said on Tuesday (March 21).

Speaking in Parliament on day two of a debate on the Covid-19 White Paper, Mr Ong said that Singapore's experience in fighting Covid-19 shows that the current Act was "too blunt and heavy".

The Infectious Diseases Act envisages only two types of public health scenarios: Peacetime or emergency, with no gradations in between.

Amending the Act, which is the main legislation enabling measures to prevent and control infectious diseases, will allow the Government to deal more effectively with a wider range of public health scenarios, Mr Ong said.

“Covid-19 taught us that in a prolonged pandemic, we can go through different phases. So the Infectious Diseases Act must be amended to deal with a wider range of scenarios. It needs to be more future proof," he said.

These scenarios can also replace the present Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (Dorscon) colour-coded framework that shows the current disease situation, Mr Ong said.

“It is more intuitive to tell the public that there is an outbreak, a threat, or an emergency as opposed to colours. And the law spells out what measures could take place under each situation,” he said.

WHY IT MATTERS

Right now, the Infectious Diseases Act empowers the Ministry of Health (MOH) to take various public health actions for disease outbreaks, such as contact tracing, isolation of infected persons, testing of contacts, or the disinfection of premises.

It also allows the ministry to declare a public health emergency in “very grave” public health situations. Doing so will activate extensive powers for the Health Minister, such as controlling the movement and gatherings of people, and imposing curfews.

While the Covid-19 pandemic was a serious threat, Mr Ong said that the authorities did not declare a public health emergency under the Infectious Diseases Act because such measures were too heavy to deal with the situation then.

“We wanted to restrict group sizes, but not to control movements of people. We were not planning to impose curfews or invoke the Requisition of Resources Act to marshal resources," he said.

“In other words, the emergency powers under the Infectious Diseases Act were too blunt and heavy compared to the public health measures and safe management measures that were needed at that time.”

Instead, the Government enacted Part 7 of the Covid-19 (Temporary Measures) Act, which was ad-hoc legislation to provide “temporary and complementary powers” to the Infectious Diseases Act.

Doing so allowed the Government to deploy a broad range of tools to tackle Covid-19 at multiple layers, without declaring a public health emergency, he said.

Mr Ong had also said last year that the authorities will review the Dorscon framework after it triggered panic buying in 2020 when the level was raised from yellow to orange.

There are four colour indicators under the Dorscon framework ranging from green, which is the lowest level indicating that a disease is mild, to red, which is the highest level and indicates that a disease is severe and spreading widely.

THE PROPOSED AMENDMENTS

Under the amended Infectious Diseases Act, there will be four public health situational tiers:

• Baseline, which refers to a peacetime state
   
• Outbreak management, where a pathogen of concern is detected and measures such as contact tracing and border controls may need to be implemented urgently to manage disease outbreaks. It will also give the authorities time to understand the characteristics of the pathogen
   
• Public health threat, where more stringent, widespread and longer-term control measures and restrictions are needed. These include various safe management measures and restrictions, up to and including a circuit breaker-like imposition
   
• Public health emergency, where very stringent measures such as curfews and requisition of public health assets and manpower may be imposed

These four situational tiers can also eventually replace the Dorscon framework, Mr Ong said.

WHAT NEXT

Mr Ong said that replacing the Dorscon framework does not mean that there will not be a repeat of the panic buying that Singapore witnessed during the pandemic when the Dorscon level was raised.

“Whether a people panic during a crisis, depends a lot on the information they are getting, and whether they know what to do, to protect themselves and contribute towards societal resilience,” he said.

However, he said that with the experience of going through various disease outbreaks such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), H1N1 and Covid-19, the Government knows much better what measures are necessary and appropriate. Singaporeans also better understand what to do in a pandemic crisis.

Mr Ong said that the full proposed amendments will be put to the House later this year. Once the amendments to Infectious Diseases Act are passed by the House, the Government intends to rescind Part 7 of the Covid-19 (Temporary Measures) Act.