When can the world breathe a collective sigh of relief? When can we stop taking protective measures? These questions put forward by Salma Khalik, Senior Health Correspondent at The Straits Times, are no doubt also at the front of everyone’s minds.
The COVID-19 outbreak will likely be a long battle; it is not something that will blow over in a week or two. It is thus important to time public health measures so that they will make the most impact and not impose unnecessary hardship on people.
Vice Dean (Research), Associate Professor Alex Cook said, “Complacency is what we need to guard against because that is what will lead to spread to others.”
If too many new cases of unknown origins continue occurring and the virus continues to be as virulent, Singapore will need to move from containment to mitigation. According to A/Prof Cook, moving to mitigation means “we accept we cannot stop the outbreak, and instead the aim is to minimise the impact”.
This would include social distancing measures so there is less mingling among people to reduce the risk of transmission. Some are already being implemented by companies who have asked employees to work from home. Such measures reduce the risk of several employees getting infected, and also reduce crowds on public transport.
“Mitigation is meant to reduce the speed of transmission,” added Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, Programme Leader (Infectious Diseases).
He said, “This does two things. First, it prevents the healthcare system (clinics and hospitals) from being overwhelmed, which will result in a rise in deaths not only from the virus, but also from all other causes.
Second, if delayed sufficiently, there is a hope that an effective treatment or vaccine may become commercially available that may be able to prevent more deaths.”
What Singapore is striving to do now, says A/Prof Cook, is to find and contain cases so they do not become clusters. If there are clusters, the point is to prevent them from fragmenting into even bigger clusters.
“These efforts now will buy us time to be better prepared and to have more knowledge on the severity of the virus, so we can gauge the correct response during the mitigation phase,” he added.
Read Senior Health Correspondent Salma Khalik’s opinion piece in full: