Singapore has effectively turned into “a hardship post” as it chose to prioritise inbound business travellers on controlled itineraries and inbound “bubble-wrapped” package tourists in its reopening plan, said Andreas Birnik, who was an adjunct professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Mr Birnik, a Swedish national living in Singapore, cited Minister of State at the Trade and Industry Ministry Alvin Tan’s Facebook post on Wednesday that said that Singapore will allow entry of vaccinated business travellers from some countries on “a carefully controlled itinerary”.
In his post, Mr Tan said that the government is also exploring ways to expand this pilot for inbound and outbound leisure travel.
“Outbound leisure travel will likely be to safer countries with lower infection rates. For inbound tourism, we are looking into bubble-wrapped itineraries with organized tour groups.
“We will consider factors such as the target countries’ infection, vaccination rates and ability to control outbreaks,” he wrote.
Mr Tan also cautioned that Singapore will see more COVID-19 cases as it re-opens borders to other countries.
“Even though we are one of the world’s most fully vaccinated countries, we must continue to be careful. We will still need masking, testing, tracing and safe management measures. We will review these measures over time but we are taking risk-based approach to re-opening,” he added.
Following Mr Tan’s post, Mr Birnik took to his LinkedIn page on Thursday, saying that the announcement was “disheartening” to many of the international community in Singapore.
He noted that while Singapore has chosen to prioritize inbound business travellers on controlled itineraries and inbound “bubble-wrapped” packages tourists in its reopening plan, many of the international community in the country have yet been able to see their families due to the pandemic.
Mr Birnik shared that his daughter has not been able to see her grandparents in Sweden for two years and one month, and “many are in the same boat” as them.
“The path forward for Singapore’s ‘re-opening’, leaves people like us unable to have our fully vaccinated parents come and visit without having to endure expensive and challenging 2-week quarantine in a tiny hotel room.
“And it leaves us unable to travel to our home countries and come back to Singapore without the same quarantine requirements for ourselves. If this is what ‘living with COVID’ looks like, it is not a very liveable life for those of us with family elsewhere.
“It effectively turns Singapore into a ‘hardship post’ where you become separated from your family for years and years,” he remarked.
Noting that Singapore is now the fifth most vaccinated country in the world, with its hospital load from COVID-19 is also fully under control, Mr Birnik asked when will the country be ready to finally open up.
“Many tell me, just give it more time and things will change. But after being separated from ageing parents in Europe for 2 years and 1 month, we don’t want to hear that we should wait longer without any clear roadmap or objective criteria for opening up. We have simply waited long enough.
“And with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, and no hospital overload, there is no objective rationale to ask us to be patient and wait longer. The time to open up is now. The time to let life go on is now. The time for Singapore to change track is now,” he added.
Mr Birnik shares Sweden’s COVID-19 fatalities rate, and Israel’s severe cases of COVID-19 amid Delta variant outbreak
In another LinkedIn post on Thursday, Mr Birnik shared two sets of informative data indicating the COVID-19 fatalities rate in Sweden, and the severe cases of COVID-19 in Israel which have gone up due to the Delta variant outbreak.
“Exhibit A (on the left) shows the fatalities in Sweden which followed a rather laissez-faire strategy by letting three waves of COVID-19 sweep through a largely unvaccinated population.
“And we now have the results of this natural experiment: 14,658 fatalities corresponding to 0.14% of the total population of 10.2 million people. Moreover, 89% of the fatalities were above 70 years old and 67% were above 80 years old,” he noted.
Mr Birnik highlighted that Sweden’s COVID-19 death rate as of 11 August has shown that COVID-19 is most deadly to the senior population in a country with “a well-functioning medical system”.
“It shows that COVID-19 sweeping through an unvaccinated population, with a well-functioning medical system, appears to be a multiple of a regular flu season rather than an existentialist threat that brings an entire society to its knees (e.g. Ebola),” he said.
Israel’s recent data of the Delta variant outbreak, on the other hand, shows that the Pfizer vaccine has provided a strong shield against severe COVID-19.
Mr Birnik pointed out that the efficacy rate of the Pfizer vaccine declines with age due to “weaker immune systems coupled with co-morbidities”, but it has clearly made “a massive difference”.
“Taken together, Exhibit A and B suggest that an aggressive re-opening of Singapore would be unlikely to bring the country to its knees,” he added.
Mr Birnik opined that the data sets have illustrated the countries’ lack of a data-driven strategy.
“Sweden’s flaw was making a reckless base jump off the pandemic cliff without any kind of data whatsoever to inform the country’s pandemic strategy. Sweden’s failure was not adopting the precautionary principle until more was known about the disease. In short, the country took a gamble.
“Singapore’s flaw is persisting with one of the world’s most restrictive and cautious COVID-19 strategies despite the data now available (e.g. Exhibit A and B) coupled with the country having the world’s fifth highest vaccination rate.
“Singapore’s failure is maintaining very restrictive COVID-19 policies that do not appear to be proportionate to the threat being faced given what we now know about fatality rates in a densely-populated well-vaccinated country with a well-functioning medical system (e.g. in Israel),” he explained.
