A young expat has revealed life in Singapore is much freer than Australia as the Asian hub renowned for being strict on litter moves to Covid normal.
Emily Rayner moved to the city nation with her boyfriend in late 2019, five months before the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic.
While 12million Australians last week lived through lockdown, Singapore has already outlined a vision for life without draconian Covid restrictions.
Vaccinated residents will be able to return without being forced into quarantine, as routine testing is scrapped.
Singapore will also stop publishing daily case numbers and instead focus on serious illness from the virus, with the aim of treating it like the seasonal flu.
A young expat has revealed life in Singapore is much freer than Australia as the Asian hub renowned for being strict on litter moves to Covid normal. Emily Rayner moved to the city nation with her boyfriend in late 2019, five months before the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic
Ms Rayner hoped Australia would soon move away from trying to eliminate Covid and instead ease restrictions, just like Singapore with its risk mitigation approach.
‘I really hope the conversation in Australia shifts from being one which it currently is about zero COVID and about keeping people from overseas out because they may carry the virus, to one about risk,’ she told the ABC’s 7.30 program.
‘What is that risk and what can we deal with?
‘What I think the Singapore government has tried to do throughout is find a balance between social measures and restricting its people and leaving the economy open and certainly now it has come out publicly and acknowledged that Covid-zero is unattainable.’
In Singapore a majority of residents have had their first dose with 59 per cent in this category compared with just 30 per cent in Australia.
When it came to being fully vaccinated, 37 per cent were in this category, having received either Pfizer or Moderna, compared with just 8 per cent in Australia.
Australians are increasingly reluctant to consent to an AstraZeneca jab, despite the risk of blood clots being three in 100,000 and sufficient Pfizer doses aren’t due to arrive until at least September.
While 12million Australians last week lived through lockdown , Singapore (pictured) has already outlined a life without Covid restrictions. Vaccinated residents will be able to return without being forced into quarantine, as routine testing is scrapped
While the New South Wales government is weighing up whether to end greater Sydney’s two-week lockdown on Friday, Singapore Health Minister Ong Ye Kung and his colleagues Gan Kim Yong and Lawrence Wong declared Covid could be treated like the flu.
Instead, the virus will be treated ‘like flu’ with only serious cases, intensive care capacity and deaths monitored to make sure the healthcare system can cope – though vaccine passports and border testing will be part of the ‘new normal’.
The Singaporean ministers said: ‘We can’t eradicate [Covid].
‘But we can turn the pandemic into something much less threatening, like influenza, hand, foot and mouth disease, or chickenpox, and get on with our lives.’
Singapore may stop counting its daily Covid case totals as ministers lay out their vision for a ‘new normal’ in which the virus is treated like flu (pictured, Singapore’s Covid cases)
Describing their vision for the future of the Covid pandemic, ministers said the virus will move from pandemic to endemic as vaccines and improved treatments reduce its infectiousness and severity.
That means it will become part of daily life, similar to the way we currently treat flu.
‘Because the chances of falling very ill from influenza are so low, people live with it,’ the ministers wrote in a joint editorial in the Straits Times.
‘They carry on with their daily activities even during the flu season, taking simple precautions or getting an annual flu jab.
‘Doing so will be our priority in the coming months.’
Under their vision of the new normal, ministers say most infected people will be able to recover at home as vaccinated people need hospital treatment far less frequently.
Those treating infected people at home are also unlikely to become sick themselves because they will also be protected with vaccines, they say.
That means there will be less emphasis on testing and contact-tracing every single case, and testing will instead be used at borders to stop the movement of dangerous variants and at large gatherings to stop them becoming super-spreader events.
Rapid antigen tests could be used to detect the presence of large outbreaks before individual cases are confirmed with a more-accurate PCR test.
Routine testing will be largely dropped as virus becomes less severe with swabs used to keep large-scale gatherings safe, under Singapore’s plans (file image)
Once a diagnosis is confirmed, the infected person would still be required to isolate themselves but their contacts would not automatically need to follow suit.
As a result of less-stringent testing, daily Covid infection figures may cease to hold relevance, they write.
‘Instead of monitoring Covid-19 infection numbers every day, we will focus on the outcomes: how many fall very sick, how many in the intensive care unit, how many need to be intubated for oxygen, and so on.
‘This is like how we now monitor influenza.’
Provided those numbers remain within seasonal norms that can be handled by the healthcare system, the economy can reopen more fully with large events and public celebrations allowed to resume.
International travel will also restart, the ministers write, though only between countries which have also reduced the virus to endemic levels.
Border testing and vaccine passports are also likely to be part of the new normal, they add.
‘History has shown that every pandemic will run its course.
‘We must harness all our energy, resources and creativity to transit as quickly as we can to the desired end-state.
‘Science and human ingenuity will eventually prevail over Covid-19.’
Singapore has been hailed for having one of the world’s best Covid responses, and to date has notched up just 62,000 cases of the virus and 36 deaths.
Vaccine passports and border testing will become part of the ‘new normal’ to keep dangerous variants under control, Singaporean ministers said (file image)
That has been largely thanks to strict border closures, aggressive testing and contact tracing, along with rules such as wearing face masks in public and bans on large gatherings.
However, it has not pursued the zero-Covid strategies of places like Australia and nearby Hong Kong, where even small outbreaks trigger mass lockdowns until cases return to zero again.
While that strategy keeps cases and deaths low and allows a relative return to normalcy between the lockdowns, experts have warned it is not sustainable long-term as it is unlikely we can wipe Covid out completely.
Instead, those places may find themselves forced to adopt a Singapore-style strategy in order to rejoin the world economy, particularly as international travel resumes and the risk of importing cases rises.
Laying out his own plans for post-pandemic Britain today, Boris Johnson is expected to say that July 19 will bring a return to near-normalcy with social distancing, mask-wearing, and work from home mandates dropped.
Hospitality venues will no longer be forced to collect customers’ details so they can be used for track and trace in the event of an outbreak.