… death from COVID-19 … that’s the equivalent of influenza that society doesn’t care about.
SINGAPORE (ANTARA) – With few deaths from COVID-19 and the world’s highest vaccination rate, Singapore plans to reopen its business sector and prepare to live with the coronavirus as it does with other common illnesses such as influenza.
Health experts say the nation is likely to see hundreds of deaths each year from COVID-19, much like the flu.
That pragmatic approach will set an example for other countries looking to come out of lockdown as they accelerate their vaccination programmes.
“The only way to not see death from a disease anywhere in the world is to completely eliminate the disease and that’s already been done with smallpox,” said Paul Tambyah, president of the Asia Pacific Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infection.
Singapore has reported just 44 deaths from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic in January 2020. That compares with about 800 flu deaths a year, doctors say, in the country of 5.7 million.
“While the idea of hundreds of deaths from COVID-19 seems staggering compared to current mortality rates and is worth the effort of prevention, it is the equivalent of influenza that society ignores,” said Alex Cook, an expert on infectious disease modeling at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Also read: Singapore to allow quarantine-free travel in September
A thousand people may die in the next year or two in Singapore if vaccinations for the elderly are not increased, he said.
Experts predict that the majority of deaths will occur in the oldest age group who have not been vaccinated even though they are eligible for the next half year.
Singapore’s health minister Ong Ye Kung said this month that when the economy opens, Singaporeans should be “psychologically prepared for the COVID-19 death toll that may rise.”
Three-quarters of Singapore’s population has received the full range of COVID-19 vaccines, and the country plans to ease restrictions in September when the vaccination rate hits 80 percent.
Also read: Vaccine recipients in Singapore account for 75 percent of COVID-19 cases
As of August 16, 80 percent of residents aged 70 years and over have been fully vaccinated, as well as 88 percent of residents aged 60-69 years.
Singapore has recorded six people who have died from COVID-19 in the past two weeks and none of them have been vaccinated.
Preliminary results from mathematical models suggest that the death rate among elderly people aged 60 and over is predicted to reach 480 by 2022, said Teo Yik Ying, dean of the Saw See School of Public Health at NUS.
Other countries that had managed to overcome the corona virus at the beginning of the pandemic such as Australia are also changing their strategies to deal with more deaths in an era where COVID-19 will still exist.
However, as one of the countries with the highest vaccination rates in the world, Singapore will probably be the first country to show what the condition really means.
“If countries start moving towards an endemic COVID-19 strategy, the expectation is that there will be more deaths from the disease, although it remains unclear how many of those deaths are considered excess and how many of those deaths occur regardless of COVID-19,” ” said Theo.
Source: Reuters
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Translator: Anton Santoso
Editor: Fardah Assegaf
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