Singapore is on a “knife’s edge with Covid-19 cases that could go either way over the next few weeks, but the country cannot completely shutdown its borders as it is not self-sufficient and need to maintain supply lines and global connections to survive, two senior minister told lawmakers on Tuesday. Singapore is now reopening its borders gradually to allow safe travel in limited numbers, with the necessary safeguards in place to ensure public health considerations are addressed.
Singapore has detected 10 different variants among local and imported coronavirus cases till date, Health Minister Gan Kim Yong told Parliament. The emergence of new Covid-19 variants have challenged existing knowledge on the virulence and transmissibility of Covid-19, he said.
Education minister Lawrence Wong, who is also the co-chair of the multi-ministry task force dealing with Covid-19, said the country is now on a “knife’s edge with neighborhood case numbers that would go both means over the subsequent few weeks. However, Gan stated, “We cannot completely shut our borders…our seaports and airports because Singapore is not self-sufficient in many things and we need to maintain our supply lines and global connections to survive. The virus will then find ways to infiltrate us.
This is similar to situations found elsewhere, where new variants of the virus likely caused a resurgence of coronavirus cases, he said in his ministerial statement on the whole-of-government response to Covid-19. “The emergence of a number of clusters, new variants in addition to a rising variety of unlinked instances means the chance of neighborhood transmission has gone up,” the Channel News Asia quoted Gan as saying.
Therefore, we must continue to stay vigilant and tighten our safe distancing measures in the community to slow down and prevent transmission of the virus, even as we make progress in our vaccination programme, he said, adding that Singapore also tightened its border measures to reduce the risk of importing cases. Education minister Wong said Singapore has a chance of getting things under control by the end of the month “however as we all know from expertise, it solely takes one lapse or one irresponsible motion for an an infection to occur; and that an infection could find yourself being a super-spreader occasion locally.
Singapore, which has roughly 5.7 million inhabitants, has up to now reported a complete of 61,378 Covid-19 instances and 31 deaths because of the illness.
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