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05 May 2020  (899 Views) 
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Covid-19 crisis


Containment of Covid-19 Spread
I sent this letter to the two ministers who co-chair the task force two week ago. I sent them a reminder after a week. They did not acknowledge or reply on both occasions. 

Dear Ministers,

Governor Cuomo of New York State said that they had carried out a random test on 3,000 of their citizens and found that 20% of the residents of New York City had already been infected with the covid-19 virus. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/nyregion/coronavirus-antibodies-test-ny.html 

This finding is critical for them to review their lockdown measures, which has been very costly to the livelihood of the people living in their city and the rest of their state. 

I suggest that a similar test be carried out for the general population of Singapore.  I understand that the covid tests have already been carried out on essential workers. If MOH is able to extract the results of these tests from the database, it can be used as an approximation to a random sample of the population.

If the type of test that was used in Singapore does not give the same kind of result as the antibody test that was used in New York, I suggest that we carry out a similar random test to that adopted in New York and use the same type of antibody test. 

It may be timely for Singapore to review our circuit breaker measures, if the random test suggests that a high proportion of the people in Singapore is already infected. 

The reason is set out by Dr Scott Atlas of Stanford University in this paper

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-in-stop-the-panic-and-end-the-total-isolation?
 
A similar strategy was suggested by the Defence Minister of Israel, Nafatali Bennett, in this video published a month ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGl1YydafxY 

I have been following the daily update from MOH on the covid-19 situation closely.

As at 26 Apr, we have a total of 13,624 cases out which 22 are in ICU and 12 have died. In spite of the increase of about 10,000 cases detected since the start of the circuit breaker, I observed that the number of infected people that need ICU care had remain stable and below 30. This data suggest that the virus is very mild in Singapore (perhaps due to our warm weather) and will not cause the same kinds of severe illness and deaths that have occured in Europe and America.

The deaths in Singapore is 2 per million of population, which is small compared to 160 in America and over 300 in many countries in Europe.

It should be safe for us to stop the circuit breaker on 4 May while still isolating the infected people, quarantining their contacts and encourage the population to follow the social distancing measures, including the wearing of face masks, that was in place prior to the circuit breaker. 

I hope that you multi-ministerial task force will consider this suggestion and review the need to extend the circuit breaker by another four weeks. This will save the country a few tens of billion dollars in additional relief measures and allow several hundred thousand workers, who were badly affected by the circuit breaker, to resume their livelihood.

Thank you.

Tan Kin Lian

PS: Please acknowledge this email.

Vote - do you agree with my suggestion?



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