Singapore has reported 455 cases and two fatalities in exactly two months since its first confirmed case on 23 January.
Assistant Professor Clarence Tam attributed the relatively well-controlled outbreak in both Hong Kong and Singapore to our small size and reinforced border control, which allowed for intensive contact tracing and screening.
“Testing early and extensively, and effective isolation, contact tracing and quarantining has been key to bringing epidemics under control,” he said.
Responding to concerns on school closures, Dr Tam said, “For COVID-19 we don’t currently know how much children contribute to transmission… but we’re also not seeing many outbreaks in schools.”
“In Hong Kong, schools have been closed since Chinese New Year, but the epidemic trajectory has been similar to that in Singapore, where schools have remained open,” he added.
Dr Tam also commented that Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines face very specific challenges “because of their large and widely-dispersed populations and the fact that they have very sizeable migrant working populations”.
Given the varying capacities across Southeast Asian countries to manage such a crisis, he noted:
“We can’t rely solely on our individual national capacities, because epidemics in other countries pose a continuing risk of re-importation and local transmission.
This means that in order to have an effective, coordinated response, we need far greater investment in strengthening health systems region-wide.”
Media Coverage:
- ‘It’s a powder keg’: South-east Asian countries grapple with virus, The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 March 2020
- ‘It’s a powder keg’: South-east Asian countries grapple with virus, The Age, 22 March 2020