Singapore's Covid Future

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has updated us on the border controls of ‘Fortress New Zealand’.

 Expectations of a major policy shift were not high, and while there were some changes made, the "Eliminate Covid" KPI remains in place.

While “Covid is raging” overseas, in the words of Health Minister Chris Hipkins, the priority seems to remain with locking Covid out.

Yet while this strategy was successful in 2020, shouldn’t we be looking at a diversified and more calibrated response?

Concerns are rising about the longer-term economic and social impact of the current NZ border policy. 

High-spending international tourists and students are sorely missed, and the lack of migrant seasonal and specialized workers is disrupting the primary and tech sectors respectively.

Singapore's Changi Airport / photo Facebook

At a macro-economic level, the tight labour market is adding further inflationary pressure on household spending. 

Economists are forecasting interest rate hikes to cool the economy. 

Lastly, there is a growing cohort of New Zealand citizens abroad who are suffering mental stress about being locked out of their home country.  Many have contacted the NZ Chamber Singapore to help raise the issue with policy-makers back home.  

According to Megan Main, Head of MiQ, there is “no silver bullet”.  But is that true?

Singapore is taking a calculated bet that there actually is.  

It has boldly announced a shift in the Covid-19 response strategy that it had previously shared with New Zealand.  It’s no longer about “eliminating-Covid” but rather “taming-Covid”.

Singapore is widely applauded as a “safe country” for containing Covid-19.  Its fatalities number in the low 40s (compared to NZ’s 28 and Australia’s more than 900), and the hospital system has never been in danger of collapse. 

It has achieved this feat by adopting the successful ”Eliminate-Covid” playbook, like NZ and Australia. 

The border has been tightly controlled, with 30,000 hotel rooms dedicated to Quarantine facilities (10x more than NZ’s capacity).  There have been multiple and phased lockdowns.  Testing is wide-spread, with aggressive ring-fencing of clusters.  Medical care is amongst the best globally.  Contact tracing and adoption of tokens is a must when entering any building to contain any potential clusters.  And massive government spending has sustained those sectors hardest hit. 

As it recovers from the lows of 2020, Singapore’s GDP could soar to almost 6% this year.

 It was in June this year that Singapore’s Covid-19 playbook evolved significantly. The “Covid-19 multi-ministry task force” – co-chaired by Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong and Health Minister Ong Ye Kung – acknowledged that Covid-19 may never go away. 

But they also reassured the public that it will be possible to live normally with it in our midst.

Singapore Health Minister Ong Ye Kung / photo Facebook

Singapore's revised ambition was now to tame Covid-19, and to no longer attempt the task of eliminating it, just as it has not been possible to eliminate the common flu. 

The goal would move from tracking total cases to tracking only serious cases.

To underpin this strategic transition, there are three pieces to the puzzle, starting with the most critical.

 Vaccination

Singapore has one the fastest vaccination rollouts globally.  70% of the population has completed the full vaccination regime as of 10 August. 

The government was fast to procure supplies, and the population has been equal to the task of getting their shots. 

Thanks to an effective communications plan, vaccines are accepted as being critical to reducing the risk of infection as well as transmission. 

The process has been flawlessly executed through an online booking system.  This week, walk-in appointments were even announced for 37 centres across the island.

 As the country opens up, the government will implement differentiated social rules based on people’s vaccination status. 

Dine-in at food and beverage establishments will be allowed for groups of up to five people if all are fully vaccinated or have a negative Covid test in the last 24 hours. 

And from Aug. 20, fully vaccinated travelers from selected countries — including Australia, Canada, Germany and South Korea — can serve a mandatory quarantine at their homes.  

This will certainly motivate the undecided to get jabbed. Further relaxed measures are expected when 80% of the population will be fully vaccinated. 

Based on current run-rate of around 60,000 vaccinations per day, this seems achievable by early September.

 Easier Testing

Testing of Covid-19 in the community will be made faster and easier. 

Domestically, testing will shift to antigen rapid tests, while the rigorous polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test will remain in place at the borders.

The antigen rapid tests, including self-tests, will be used for events, social activities and overseas trips.

They have already been rolled out to clinics, employers, premises owners and pharmacies. The government is also working on a breathalyser based test that takes one to two minutes to produce results and does not involve swabbing.

 Treatments will improve

There is trust in medical science to continuing providing ever improved treatments for Covid-19. Today, there is already a range of effective treatments in Singapore’s excellent hospitals. 

Eighteen months after the pandemic started, there are many therapeutic agents that are effective in treating the critically ill, quickening recovery, and reducing disease progression, severity and mortality.

The Ministry of Health tracks these developments closely, ensuring an adequate supplies of these drugs, while medical researchers actively participate in the development of new treatments.

Singapore's Hawker Food Centres have been hit hard by Covid 19 / photo wikimedia

 Added to these factors - there is always the human factor: accepting that Covid-19 will be endemic and collectively doing our part.

The concept of shouldering the burden together is at the heart of this young nation, and is seen as critical for staying safe, as well as giving the government confidence that the goal can be achieved.

 “We’re now in a stronger position to resume with our re-opening journey, but in a cautious and calibrated way,” remarked Minister Gan this past week. 

Let’s hope the Singapore model can inspire our own government and policy makers.  There are many New Zealanders longing to hear those words.

-Asia Media Centre