900 general practitioner (GP) clinics, designated as Public Health Preparedness Clinics (PHPC), will be progressively activated to care for patients with respiratory symptoms, such as fever, cough, sore throat and runny nose.

This was announced by Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong last Friday (Feb. 14).

Singapore citizens and permanent residents will pay a flat subsidised rate of S$10, while members of the Pioneer Generation and Merdeka Generation will pay S$5.

Healthcare professionals have also been advised to provide medical certificates of five days for patients with respiratory symptoms, in an attempt to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19).

Designated PHPC clinics

Patients will benefit from these new schemes at 900 PHPCs.

PHPCs are guided on the appropriate care protocols according to the assessed risk and diagnosis of each patient, and will be supplied with the necessary Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) to carry out their role.

Many local confirmed patients continued to be in the public when they were ill

According to MOH, many local confirmed cases had continued to circulate in the community or even gone to work when they were already ill.

Based on the Covid-19 cases in Singapore so far, the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) also observed that significant number of patients have mild symptoms in the initial phase of infection.

These symptoms are similar to the influenza, and involve mild flu-like symptoms such as fever and cough, although Gan also said that "it is a fact that most patients with respiratory symptoms are not infected with Covid-19".

As a result, MOH is progressively reactivating PHPCs, in order to reduce the risk of community transmission.

The activations of PHPCs is not new, said Gan on Feb.14, as he explained that they were previously activated to deal with the haze and the H1N1 influenza pandemic.

Locate your PHPC clinic

Members of the public can identify these clinics from the PHPC decal (shown below).

One can also locate his or her nearest PHPC clinic by visiting the flugowhere.gov.sg website.

Top image from Gov.sg and Flugowhere.gov.sg.