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Singapore prepares to be the first country to live with Covid-19

17 August 2021 16:24 (UTC +04:00)

With just a few dozen Covid-19 deaths and one of the world’s highest vaccination rates, Singapore wants to reopen for business – and is laying the groundwork to live with the coronavirus as it does other common diseases such as influenza, APA reports citing The Guardian.

Its medical experts say there may be hundreds of deaths each year from endemic Covid-19, similar to the flu. That pragmatic approach could set an example for other countries looking to exit lockdowns as they ramp up their own inoculation programmes.

“The only way to have no deaths from a disease anywhere in the world is to eliminate the disease altogether and that has only been done for smallpox,” said Paul Tambyah, the president of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection.

Singapore has reported only 44 Covid-19 deaths since the outbreak started in early January 2020. That compares with about 800 flu-related deaths in a typical year, according to doctors, in the country with a population of 5.7 million.

“While the idea of hundreds of Covid deaths seems shocking compared to the deaths so far and worth taking efforts to prevent, it is on par with influenza, which society hardly cares about,” said Alex Cook, an infectious disease modelling expert at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

As many as 1,000 may die in the next year or two in Singapore if vaccinations among elderly people do not improve, he added.