Debated in Parliament on 2 Feb 2021.
Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis asked the Minister for National Development (a) what is the number of Stay-Home-Notice (SHN) hotels and rooms currently contracted by the Ministry; (b) what is the current physical occupancy rates of the hotels and their average contracted periods remaining; and (c) what is the Ministry’s plan to manage the number of SHN hotels to balance cost considerations and demand for such facilities.
There are typically between 30 to 70 hotels operating as Stay-Home Notice (SHN) dedicated facilities (SDFs). MND works with agencies such as MTI, MOM, MOE and ICA to match the supply of SDFs with forecasted demand. We have built flexibility in the system and worked with our hotel partners to put in place arrangements that allow us to be agile in activating and standing down capacity as required. The contracts for facilities will be renewed, so long as they continue to be needed to manage the risk of imported cases.
There are about 15,000 individuals currently in SDFs. This figure changes depending on the external COVID environment, our border control policies, travel demand and other factors. A key consideration in our planning is ensuring sufficient vacant SDF capacity to accommodate returning Singaporeans who are welcome to return home at any point in time.
We will continue to monitor the trends and evolving COVID-19 situation closely and adjust our active SDF capacity accordingly. Protecting the community from imported cases is our priority, and the SDF system that we have in place today is critical to ensure that travellers can be effectively isolated until they are found to be free of COVID-19. In balancing between the cost of SDFs and allowing inflow of travellers to meet our economic and social support needs (e.g. foreign domestic workers), we must ensure that we do not compromise our ability to isolate travellers arriving from higher risk countries. Since, 1 January 2021, all incoming travellers have to pay for their stay at SDF hotels.
PAPERCUTS