The COVID-19 outbreak seems to have tapered off in Singapore in the past week — four weeks after the virus was first confirmed here — but it is still far too early to say the worst is over. While the number of new cases detected has fallen steadily, there is no way to be certain that another surge will not happen.
The fall in the number of confirmed cases in the past week indicates that Singapore’s efforts have been successful in limiting the spread of COVID-19, said Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, Programme Leader (Infectious Diseases) and Co-Director (Global Health).
“It is likely that current massive contact tracing — initiated right at the start of the outbreak in Singapore — has led to the majority of cases being uncovered. Current quarantine and social distancing measures have also worked to reduce transmission in Singapore,” said A/Prof Hsu.
However, cases outside China are growing at an accelerating rate, and there is an increasing concern that further cases of the infection could arrive from such countries.
While the number of imported cases of COVID-19 in Singapore has been negligible after the country put in place border control measures, Associate Professor Alex Cook predicts that this could climb again, with increasing numbers of imports from other countries seeding more clusters in Singapore.
“In normal times there is a lot of travel to and from Singapore and places like Japan and Thailand, both of which have quite large numbers of confirmed cases,” said A/Prof Cook, Vice Dean (Research) and Domain Leader (Biostatistics and Modelling).
He added, “With more cases being observed beyond China it looks far too early to celebrate.”
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