We came across multiple posts on the social media platform X on the following topic (1, 2):

Various posts suggested that Singapore had passed a new law criminalising the refusal of vaccination under the penalty of jail time and sizeable fines.

The posts suggest that the new legal changes were made shortly following the visits of figures such as Bill Gates, WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus, and World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab. A picture of Gates shaking hands with PM Wong was shared in some of the posts.

It is true that both Gates and Ghebreyesus visited Singapore recently in the month of May 2025. Gates’ visit was widely reported in local media such as CNA, which used the photo shared in the post, while Ghebreyesus’ visit was reported on the WHO website, with a photo of him meeting President Tharman Shanmugaratnam.

Schwab, meanwhile, had visited a few months earlier in November 2024, during which he was interviewed in the Straits Times.

However, when we conducted a keyword search, we did not identify any laws that were passed recently following their visits that made the changes alleged in the posts.

A Plethora of Suspicious Voices

Focusing our search on the origin of the claims, we found that earliest instance of the story was found on a site called LifeSiteNews on 6 May.

LifeSiteNews is a Canada-based website founded by a political lobbyist organisation to advocate for socially conservative and pro-Evangelical Christian causes. The site has on several instances promoted disinformation regarding vaccines.

The news story then spread in the following days to more prolific US-based sites that have regularly promoted disinformation and conspiracy theories, such as The People’s Voice, Slay News and Signs of the Times, before later finding its way across the Internet further.

It must be noted here that The People’s Voice, which appears to be the source with the highest reach among those listed so far, has no relation to Peoples Voice, the Singapore political party founded in 2018 by Lim Tean.

The People’s Voice, formerly known as YourNewsWire and NewsPunch, is a Los Angeles-based site that had become highly prominent in recent years due to high-profile cases of disinformation. These include Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was connected to paedophile rings that ran out of pizzerias in Washington.

The site and its owner have been blacklisted as possible sources of Russian-sponsored propaganda and disinformation, and have also previously published false stories about Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates, among others.

What They Claim

We noticed some disparities when comparing the reports across the various sources. The report on LifeSiteNews reports that,

‘Singapore has tightened its laws around mandatory vaccinations, opening the door to criminal prosecution for those who refuse to submit to government-mandated injections.

According to amendments made in 2023 and 2024 to Sections 47, 65, and 67 of Singapore’s 1976 Infectious Diseases Act (IDA), people who refuse to get vaccinated when directed to by the government could be considered criminals.’

The site referenced a Facebook post by Derrick Sim of the People’s Power Party, who wrote,

‘Section 47, 65 and 67 of the Infectious Disease Act were amended and in effect since 2023. If you choose not to go for vaccination during the next pandemic, you will be deemed to commit an offence. You will be criminalize [sic]. The penalty for first time offence is 6 months imprisonment or up to $10,000 fine, or both. Do you support this such ridiculous law?

The People’s Voice broadly repeated these claims, but suggested the amendments were made more recently in relation to, and following, the visits of Gates and Ghebreyesus, stating, ‘the timing of the dystopian legislation is impossible to ignore.’

What the Law Says

To assess the accuracy of the claims, we took a look at the Infectious Diseases Act 1976 (IDA), the text and amendment history of which is available online.

To begin with, we noted that the most recent amendment to the Act was passed in Parliament on 7 January 2025, long before the visits of Gates and Ghebreyesus.

Other aspects of the claim are, however, accurate. Section 47 states that ‘the Director-General of Health may by order direct any person or class of persons not protected or vaccinated against that infectious disease to undergo vaccination’.

Sections 65 states that those found guilty of an offence under the Act would, in the case of a first offence, incur a fine not exceeding $10,000, imprisonment not exceeding six months or both.

Section 67 protects the Director-General of Health and other officials from liability in their execution of the Act.

Our investigation of the amendments cited in the claims also revealed that the claims were misleading. The amendments made to the Act in 2023 and 2024 appear to refer to changes that were made to incorporate some of the measures in the Covid-19 (Temporary Measures) Act, but do not mention making vaccination mandatory.

These measures gave the health minister powers to declare public health threats, an intermediate state between peacetime and emergency, and apply control measures in this state. Previously, the IDA only provided for the declaration of a public health emergency.

The legislative history of the IDA showed that sections 47, 65 and 67 only underwent minor changes in amendments in 2023 and 2024. In fact, the earliest version of the document we could find, effective since 1987, also allowed for the health minister under section 42 to direct people to be vaccinated in the case of an outbreak of any infectious disease.

While we did find cases of Singaporeans being charged for infringing the regulations of the IDA, such as defying stay home notices, we found no evidence that any group of people had been charged or jailed for defying orders to undergo vaccination under the powers granted by this Act recently.

However, we did find instances where specific groups of people are required to be vaccinated. For example, Singaporean Muslims travelling for the Haj pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June this year are required to be vaccinated for influenza, Covid-19 and meningococcal disease.

The vaccinations mentioned in the claims do not specify the vaccine. There are two vaccines mandatory by law in Singapore, Diphtheria and Measles, with this law being in effect even in the earliest version of the document in 1987.

Parents and guardians of every child in Singapore are required by law to ensure that their children receive vaccination against Diphtheria and Measles.

Other vaccines, including vaccination for the Covid-19 pandemic, are not compulsory in Singapore.

Infectious Claims

In conclusion, the claims do contain some factual elements that the government can order Singaporeans to undergo vaccination, and that they can be charged and jailed for not complying with this order.

However, these claims deliberately mislead readers to the scope of the law, which only applies at the discretion of the Director-General of Health (currently Professor Kenneth Mak) in an outbreak or a suspected outbreak of infectious disease in Singapore.

Several elements of the claims are false, including the details of the provisions and timings of the amendments. The amendments have nothing to do with vaccination, and are not related to the visits of Schwab, Gates or Ghebreyesus.

In addition, the poor credibility of the sources, their history of promoting conspiracy theories and disinformation, and the editing of previous reports to include superfluous information suggest an intentional perversion of the facts for malicious or self-serving purposes.

As such, we find the claim that Gates and the other individuals influenced Singapore to pass a new law making vaccines mandatory to be mostly false.