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SINGAPORE – The next few days are a critical period that will determine whether the breakers’ measures can be alleviated before May 4, infectious disease experts told The Straits Times on Monday (April 20).
Tuesday marks 14 days since the stringent safe distancing measures came into effect, designed to curb the spread of coronavirus infection.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote in a Facebook post: “There are some early signs that the circuit breaker is lowering cases. But we are still concerned about the hidden cases circulating in our population, which are keeping the outbreak going. ” The next few days will be critical. “
Dr Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious disease expert at Mount Elizabeth Ninth Hospital, said Monday that the next few days will be “like a mid-year review” that will show how Singapore has been battling the virus.
This is because the virus can incubate in someone for up to 14 days, and the average time it takes for a person to show symptoms and is more likely to infect others is five days.
This means that someone who became infected at the beginning of the circuit breaker measurements will have had the opportunity to transmit the infection to a value of three cycles of people, and the effectiveness of attempts to break these cycles will be revealed in the coming days.
Professor Paul Tambyah, from Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS), said it is necessary to reduce the number of confirmed cases collected by primary care clinic surveillance of flu-like illness, as well as those from monitoring pneumonia in hospitals, to as close to zero as possible.
“If that happens, we can be more confident about gradually lifting the circuit breaker,” he said.
But experts disagreed on whether cases in the community had decreased enough.
Professor Teo Yik Ying, dean of the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, noted that the average number of three-day cases in the community fell from a peak of 48 during April 8 to April 10, to 26 in the last three days. .
He said: “This is an encouraging sign that the circuit breaker measures are working to reduce the spread in the community. If the public has been listening to the call to stay home as much as possible, then I anticipate that the employer descending should continue for the next two weeks. “
He noted that human trafficking in public spaces has been “significantly reduced” since the circuit breaker was implemented, and said this would reduce human-to-human interactions and reduce the risk of transmission of the virus.
However, he added that he had expected the number of infections to be lower and that there were still areas to strengthen.
However, Dr. Leong called the daily number of cases “miserable”. He said, “I was hoping that (the number) would have dropped to around 10-15 by now … honestly, I’m pretty disappointed.”
He added: “Most of the population complies, even up to 99 percent of them. But that’s not good enough. To really reduce this virus, we need 99.99 percent of the population to comply.”
He expected the number of cases in the community to drop to five or less by the end of the switch period.
Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, head of the infectious disease program at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said the recent decline in community cases showed that circuit breaker measures have been effective.
But he noted that it was not a complete blockade, and that people also continued to ignore the rules.
“In such circumstances, the virus will still be able to spread, but much less easily than before,” he said.
A survey by government comment agency Reach April 9-13 found that 8 percent of Singaporeans did not see the need to wear a face mask, 5 percent did not see the need to maintain a safe distance from others, and 4 the percentage had made social visits to family and friends or had met other people for recreational purposes.
On Monday, the Building and Construction Authority announced that the managing corporation of a condominium and four residents of various farms, had been fined for violating safe distancing measures.
The same day, the National Parks Board said nine people would be accused of circumventing the rules of circuit breakers after feeding or observing a group of wild boars over the weekend.
There is also the issue of bedrooms, which have recently been the source of most cases here.
Infectious disease expert Annelies Wilder-Smith of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang University of Technology said Singapore’s dormitories are its “weakest link” in the battle against the coronavirus.
“Foreign workers live in confined spaces, making it almost impossible to reduce contact between them in the dorms. Covid-19 is very contagious and the transmission speed is exceeding the speed of the interventions,” he said.
He noted that in many cases, transmission of the disease occurred before symptoms appeared, meaning that many people would have already been infected before the original patient could be isolated.
Professor Teo and Professor Hsu said the next few days would show whether measures implemented to counter the rapid spread of infection in the dormitories, such as relocating workers and improving hygiene, have been effective.
Professor Teo also said that policymakers have a deeper insight into the source of each infection, allowing them to spot additional gaps in current circuit breaker measures and decide whether more needs to be done to connect them, such as the case. Recent Health Ministry advising McDonald’s to stop operations until May 4.
However, when it comes to members of the public, experts agreed that the best way to combat the spread of the virus is to practice good social hygiene and safe distancing measures.
Professor Tambyah said: “As individuals, the key is to take good care of our health, practice good hand hygiene and seek medical attention if we are not well.”
Dr. Leong said: “If we all treat every person we know as a possible Trojan horse, then our cases would be zero. But we have let our guard down, and so the cases come.
“Many of us health workers care for Covid-19 patients, but we don’t get sick because we are very strict about infection control measures. If the public can do it, we can easily win this.”
Professor Hsu also asked those who are more affluent to consider helping those in need at this time.
“There are many disabled or belonging to low-income families who have been severely affected by the loss or reduction of income from job suspensions or losses,” he said.
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