Singapore stops counting Covid cases and plans to treat virus like flu een

The city-state of Singapore could be one of the first countries to stop daily records of Covid cases. Treating the virus like a regular flu; an attempt to return to the old normal.

In the news: Three Leading Members of Singapores Covid-19 taskforce have drawn up a blueprint to end 18 months of severe restrictions and allow quarantine-free travel and public gatherings again.

• It is hoped that people will “get on with their lives” by doing away with the strict rules and instead fighting the virus with other means, such as mass vaccination and better treatments.
• “Instead of monitoring the number of Covid-19 infections every day, we will focus on the results,” the ministers of Commerce, Finance and Health wrote in a joint opinion piece in the newspaper. Straits Times.
• “How many get very sick, how many in intensive care, how many have to be intubated for oxygen, and so on. This is similar to the way we monitor flu now.
• “We can’t eradicate it, but we can turn the pandemic into something much less threatening, such as the flu, hand, foot and mouth disease, or chickenpox, and move on with our lives.”

The solution? Of course: vaccinate. Singapore officials aim to provide at least two-thirds of the population with their first vaccination by early this month, and to fully vaccinate the same number by early August.

• The ministers added: “Early signs indicate that we can tame Covid-19 through vaccination.”
• “Vaccines are very effective in reducing the risk of infection and transmission. Even if you are infected, vaccines help prevent severe symptoms of Covid-19.
• “The bad news is that Covid-19 may never go away. The good news is that it is possible to live normally with it in our midst.”
• Full details of the roadmap are yet to be revealed, but ministers suggested measures such as breathalyzers, more therapeutic treatments and more personal responsibility.”

Singapore’s proposal could be an early sign that the world is starting to come alive with Covid after more than a year of restrictions around the world.

Few deaths: The Southeast Asian country has recorded just 36 deaths since the start of the pandemic by introducing draconian rules to limit the infection rate.

• The city-state, which has a population of 5.7 million, has registered 62,617 cases so far – but this proposal aims to end a daily count.

Elders. In the UK, UK Health Minister Sajid Javid has argued that Britain will have to “learn to live with Covid” – comparing its future to that of the flu.

• More than half of the world’s population has not yet received a dose of the Covid vaccine – while some three billion doses have been administered worldwide.
• It is feared by many virologists that the gaping holes in global vaccination coverage, combined with rampant outbreaks, could lead to new variants – such as Delta – and the newfound Lambdastrains – will give the opportunity to reproduce.

(tb)

–

–