Singapore has been relatively successful in containing the spread of Covid-19. However, the city-state experienced one of the largest spike in new cases in over a year. Singapore reported more than 1,000 Covid cases for two straight days over the weekend — the first time infections breached that level since April 2020, what most consider the apex of the pandemic.
This is a rather unfortunate turn of events as the nation has slowly been turning away from social restrictions over the past few weeks. However, this may not come as a huge surprise as Singapore’s ministers have previously announced the nation’s intentions to live with the virus, predicting cases to rise to over 1,000 per day. This may be a result of the country refraining from reimplementing stricter measures.
This approach to the virus stands in stark contrast to Singapore’s earlier strategy of containment, where restrictions held an iron grip on movement, resulting in some of the lowest Covid-19 cases seen throughout the world.
On the bright side, more than 80 percent of Singapore’s population has already been vaccinated, putting the city-state in a rather unique position compared to other nations. This means that Singapore can put more focus on assisting the severely ill as opposed to worrying about massive outbreak in new cases.
Over the past 4 weeks, 98.1 percent of infected people were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms, according to the health ministry’s daily update.
Out of 7,144 active cases as of 19 September, 118 people required oxygen supplementation and 21 people are in critical condition in the intensive care unit (ICU).
