Last Friday (3 September), Lawrence Wong, co-chair of the COVID-19 multi-ministry task force, said that authorities will only revert to tightened restrictions as “a last resort” with 81% of Singapore’s population vaccinated.
Mr Wong, who is also Finance Minister, said that the rise in daily cases Singapore is seeing is “not unexpected” as they are a result of a resumption of activities in the recent weeks.
Noting the shift in the administration’s approach to the pandemic, Mr Wong said that the focus now is not just on the daily case numbers—of which many are vaccinated persons who have been infected but experience mild or no symptoms—but also on the smaller number of infected persons who need supplementary oxygen or intensive care.
The latter, he says, “remains stable and under control”.
During the 3 September press briefing, Mr Wong noted that Singapore is now moving into a phase of living with COVID-19 and become “COVID-resilient”. As such, is not need to tighten restrictions.
He said: “In the past, when we have a situation of such high daily cases, we would have looked to measures like the heightened alert or even a circuit breaker to control the infection.”
“But we are in a new phase where we have a high level of vaccine coverage to protect Singaporeans, and we are now moving into a phase of living with COVID and becoming COVID-resilient.”
“And so we assess that there is no need to impose tightened restrictions. In fact, we would only revert to such a tightened posture as a last resort to prevent our hospital system from being overwhelmed.”
Mr Wong added that there is also no intention at the moment to open up more as they wanted to take some time to monitor the situation. Additionally, the taskforce also wanted to allow time for some new pilot programmes—such as vaccinated travel or allowing workers in dormitories to be out in the community—to bear out before contemplating further moves.
Despite all that, it appears that the government is changing its tune yet again.
Just a couple of days later on Monday (6 Sept), Mr Wong beseeched the public to scale back their social activities after the Ministry of Health urged all individuals to limit themselves to one social gathering a day.
The MOH had also announced that social gathers and interactions at workplaces would no longer be allowed from 9 September in order to reduce the community and workplace transmissions.
Mr Wong warned that cases have been doubling each week as the reproduction rate (R) of the virus is more than 1.
He said: “What is of concern to us is not just the absolute number of cases, but the rate at which the virus is spreading. And that’s the reproduction rate or R.”
“Currently the R is more than 1. Cases are doubling every week, and if we continue on this trajectory of infection, it means we could have 1000 cases in two weeks or possibly 2000 in a month.”
Mr Wong cautioned that based on the situation in other countries, a sharp rise in cases usually also means an increase in ICU cases and fatalities due to the virus
Stressing the need to slow down the rate of transmissions, Mr Wong said that the authorities “hope” this can be down without needing to go back to the heightened alert or circuit breaker.
However, he doesn’t rule it out entirely.
“We will try out best to refrain from using them, but we should not rule them out entirely,” he said.
“And if despite our best efforts, we continue to see or we see serious cases in ICU or needing oxygen going up sharply, then we may have no choice but to adopts a more tightened posture,” added Mr Wong.
More clarity is needed on criteria for easing or tightening restrictions
Mr Wong’s changing tune this week about possibly returning to tightened measures after assuring the public that they wouldn’t have to face further restrictions just two days prior can cause confusion, and importantly, also begs the question as to why there is a lack of clarity the criteria for restrictions moving forward.
In August, infectious diseases specialist and chairman of Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) Professor Paul Tambyah called for a clear set of criteria from authorities on how and when restrictions would be eased or tightened as the pandemic situation continues to develop and Singapore starts living with COVID-19 as an endemic.
Pointing out that certain things have been “really confusing and frustrating” for small business owners, such as the lack of clarity in the criteria that would trigger a scaling up or down of restrictions, Prof Tambyah noted that other countries tend to have a set of criteria for such situations.
He cited the example of New Zealand which went into a nationwide lockdown with just one new case reported.
During the live interview on his Facebook page, Prof Tambyah said: “We could have certain criteria like if it’s more than 10 cases or more than 10 unlinked cases, then you scale back certain things.”
“But, you know, a few weeks ago, when they introduced these restrictions [that] certain numbers of vaccinated people, certain numbers of unvaccinated people…and it was just really, really confusing,” he added.
