Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang and Dr Tan Min-Han served as frontline physicians at Singapore’s Communicable Disease Centre (now the National Centre for Infectious Diseases) during the SARS outbreak and they are now involved in responding to the COVID-19 challenge in the country.
In the spirit of international cooperation, they share their experiences and observations that may be of benefit to other countries, systems and individuals during this global challenge.
These include a whole-of-government response, aggressive but targeted quarantine measures, emphasis on public health communication, and support for healthcare workers.
They note that while some of these are unique to the Singapore system, others offer more broadly generalisable lessons at the disease level, as well as at the community, health system and national levels.
Assoc Prof Hsu leads the Infectious Diseases Programme at the School and Dr Tan is the founding CEO and Medical Director of molecular diagnostics company Lucence.
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