From 1 November, the Singapore government will allow resumption of concerts with limited audiences at designated venues.
The Ministry for Culture, Community and Youth is taking this step more cautiously than with the re-opening of libraries, museums and cultural sites, which has been happening for some weeks.
The Minister in charge, Edwin Tong, has made it clear that spikes in Covid-19 infections in the Netherlands and Japan have made it clear that the risks are higher with live performance, so the rules his department have set are strict: two zones of a maximum of 50 ticket holders in spaced seating, limits on artists and technicians allowed to be unmasked, careful spacing backstage.
The move is part of Singapore’s progress into what the government calls Phase Three of the project to stop the virus.
The venues that re-open will be those that can handle the numbers of audience members, both in terms of seating space and traffic, but Gan Kim Yong of the Multi-Ministry Task Force for Covid-19 admits that many venues may still find re-opening unviable with such small numbers of ticket-holders.
