'Battle-weary' Singapore plans to treat COVID-19 like 'endemic' such as flu, malaria

Debilitated by the economic and social impact of the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus that was first officially confirmed in December 2019 in China’s Wuhan, Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) decided to claim normalcy by treating COVID-19 as an ‘endemic’ disease. In a report carried by The Strait Times on June 29, at least three health ministry officials revealed that the country is drafting a blueprint for COVID-19 “endemic plan” that would require the population to get the “multi-year” vaccine booster shots, such as those administered for the flu viruses. 

An endemic is a disease outbreak that is consistently present but limited which makes the disease spread and rates predictable, for example, Malaria and Influenza disease which is considered endemic in certain countries and regions. Singapore’s three ministers of a multi-ministry task force concluded that while the novel coronavirus may never go away it is possible to live “normally with it in our midst”. 

The new roadmap implies that Singapore will deter its focus from the WHO-advised sweeping health protocols that prohibit mass gathering, social distancing, and other COVID-related measures, and might in fact halt keeping the record of the confirmed cases on the database. Singapore’s coronavirus task force backed the government’s decision saying that people were now becoming “battle-weary” 18 months into the fight with the pandemic, and it now requires “a different approach.”  

Coronavirus 'is not going away': Singapore COVID  task force officials

Singapore’s health ministry emphasized ramping up the rate of inoculation as in the case of endemic diseases which would expand on a yearly basis with multiple shots of the vaccine. This, they said, would help manage the coronavirus like the common flu. Minister for Trade and Industry Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Finance Lawrence Wong, and Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung stated that the coronavirus " is not going away" and that the population would have to learn to live with it. For the next few weeks, the country plans to focus on treating the COVID-19 as the controllable disease in midst of rising public anxiety about “When and how will the pandemic end?”

The authorities added that the vaccination has proven to be effective not only in minimizing the rates of infections but also in controlling the overall transmission and severity of the disease. Research has shown that fully vaccinated people tend to have a milder form of infection, with some people that report the breakthrough infection showing no symptoms at all. In January 2020, the World Health Organization declared the then-called “Wuhan virus” a pandemic, having analyzed at large the public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).