Minister Ong Ye Kung says S’pore will not be ‘chasing down every single case’; MOH to revamp its daily COVID-19 report
The Ministry of Health (MOH) will soon revamp its daily COVID-19 report to reflect “salient issues” being faced in this new phase of the battle, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung, adding that the country will no longer be “chasing down every single case”.Speaking at a press conference by the COVID-19 multi-ministry task force on Friday (3 Sep), Mr Ong noted that Singapore is now in “a very different stage” of its battle against COVID-19.“In the past, we tried to suppress every cluster, trace down to the last infection, and try to eliminate them," said the Minister.“With the more transmissible Delta variant, this will be very challenging to do and we may not be prepared to pay the price of doing so, in the form of border closures, circuit breaker and heightened alert. It is just not sustainable," he added.Singapore already has a high vaccination rate of more than 80 per cent, and therefore, the Minister believes that it is “timely” for MOH to revamp its daily COVID-19 report again.With the vaccination rate high and plateauing, there is “very little need” for MOH to present a detailed report with graphs on daily vaccination rates, said Mr Ong.“Perhaps when there are booster shots (being administered), we can start monitoring that,” he added.Mr Ong further noted that the number of unlinked cases is also “not as relevant as before” now that Singapore is no longer “chasing down every single case”."As we are not chasing down every single case, which means unlinked numbers are also not as relevant as before," he remarked.However, Mr Ong acknowledged that the public will want to know more information about emerging clusters so as to avoid certain places.“This is good and we should make those information available in a timely relevant way so that the public can act upon it,” he noted.“That brings me to my last point, which is that at this stage, personal responsibility becomes very important. We all need to take care of ourselves and take care of the people around us. The Government, on our part we do whatever we can,” Mr Ong concluded.
MOH has stopped providing details of COVID-19 community cases
MOH announced earlier on 29 June that it will no longer disclose details of each new COVID-19 case detected in the community, as Singapore moves towards a new phase of battling the pandemic.“Besides daily numbers, we will include information on the key trends of the local situation, clusters we are monitoring, progress of vaccination and the number of people who suffered a severe form of the disease,” the Ministry stated.Previously, the MOH had provided detailed information on each new community case including when they were tested positive, places they had visited and which cases they had been linked too, as well as whether they had been vaccinated.The Ministry noted that the decision was made by the COVID-19 multi-ministry task force, with a “strong focus on preventing the virus from spreading, vaccinating our population and starting the process to transit to a new normal”.Netizens ask about the use of TraceTogether token and the Govt's vaccination plan for children, some think the Govt is hiding details of unlinked cases
Penning their thoughts under the comments section of MOH’s Facebook post on the matter, Mr Ong’s remarks have led netizens to question the use of TraceTogether token, given that the country is no longer chasing down every single case of COVID-19.One netizen wrote: “’No longer chase every single case’. DOES that mean that NOT need to use the Tracetogether Token for safety entry and exit since MOH not going to chase every single case?”“If you are not gonna ‘chase all unlinked cases’ and If it’s not important, then tracetogether is not important anymore isn’t it? Why the need of tracetogether? [Why] the need to restrict dining in/ exercises in group etc? Contradicting as usual,” said another commenter.
Some netizens commented that the Government seems to “hide” details of unlinked cases, which have continued to increase recently. MOH on Sunday (5 Sep) confirmed and verified that there were 186 cases of locally transmitted COVID-19 infection, of which 90 were unlinked cases.“Cannot manage the rising unlinked cases and answer to the public so choose to hide the report card. Champion,” said one netizen.
Several others asked about the Government’s vaccination plan for children, given that they are still at high risk of getting infected.One Facebook user commented, “Did our ministers forgot about children below 12 years old? If the cases get too high and infect them, how? Please consider holistically.”“Even we are fully vaccine [there’s] no guarantee that we won't get infected by the virus... Only concern the elderly, what about going school kids below 12? U mean they won't get infected by the virus?” said another netizen.
