Covid-19 crisis Why I support temperate screening
I support temperature screening, but not contact tracing. Here are my reasons.

Contact tracing takes a lot of effort to collect the details of visitors, and yield questionable results. The rationale for contract tracing is that an infected person may spread the virus before the symptoms appear. The aim is to identify people who might have the virus through a contact with an infected person.

The problem with this approach is that the infected person would probably have infected many people in the bus, train, mall or markets that are not captured by contact tracing. Why put in so much effort into recording contract tracing details when it is likely to capture only a tiny fraction of the people who are contacted?

Although it is possible to infect another person during the incubation period, the actual spread of the infection is quite small in Singapore. It is probably due to our warm weather which is not conducive to the virus. 

I do not object to contract tracing using available data. But I strongly object to the tremendous work involved in capturing contact details of visitors at malls, worksites and other locations, when most of the data are unlikely to be used and are of limited value.

Why do I support temperature screening? It captures infected people who have developed a fever. At that time, the infection rate is much higher, compared to the incubation period.

It is also necessary to treat the infected person early, as the virus becomes more harmful with time. 

Given our limited resources, I prefer to adopt temperature screening and catch the infected persons when the symptoms appear.

Under my approach, I will make it convenient for every person to be screened every three days, or even more frequently, if the resources permit. 

A person who is screened to be "okay" will be given a sticker that is valid for three days. He may go for screening more often if he (or she) wishes. 

Under this approach, the first level screening will be carried out at a few thousand convenient locations but are supervised by a central agency (and not conducted by separate organizations). This will ensure that a high standard of screening is attained and duplicate screenings are avoided.

There is no need for a person to be screened several times a day because he visits different places with their decentralzed screening processes. 

At the first level screening locations, hand sanitizers are provided so that the users can disinfect their hands conveniently. 

If the person is screened to have a fever, he is sent to a designated clinic for a second level screening. This will be free to the patient. 

If the next screening confirms the infection, the person is sent to a hospital for treatment. The cost of treatment will be borne by the state.

The general public will not need to worry that they have to be quarantined and suffer a loss of income, or be treated in the hospital and shoulder large fees. 

I expect this approach to be more effective and probably less costly that the decentralized approach and contact tracing adopted under Dorscon Orange.

I hope that the minister of health is listening. 

Tan Kin Lian

 

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