Singapore—Madam Ho Ching, the chief executive of Temasek Holdings and wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong issued a sober warning over social media on Friday morning (Jul 23) as to what direction the current upswing in Covid-19 infections may take.
She first shared a graph from the Facebook page of the Ministry of Health, highlighting the 52 unlinked and 50 unquarantined linked Covid-19 cases recorded on Thursday (Jul 22).
“Ouch!,” she wrote.
“Ouch!,” she wrote.Mdm Ho’s main concern centred around the possibility of superspreaders or even one single ultra superspreader, which could result in an uncontrolled spread of the infection.
And the higher number of infections there are, the higher the chances of more superspreaders.
“If we have 50 within a week, it means the chance of 5~10 superspreaders who could spread to many more. Of these, we could possibly have 1 ultra superspreader.
If we have 250 within a week, it means more chances for superspreaders to spread further to create more hidden clusters. At 10~20% of the cohort, this means 25~50 superspreaders, or as many as 5 ultra superspreaders,” wrote Mdm Ho.
Such large numbers could mean serious consequences for Singapore.
“This means we would be on the verge of an epidemic breakout, unless we take swift community level safe distancing measures,” she added.
In the post that followed, she wrote that “the best protection” for everyone is getting vaccinated.
She shared another graph from MOH, this time one that featured the 7-day Moving Average Number of Community Unlinked and Linked Cases
Mdm Ho suggested that it would be “useful to add an unquarantined linked line to the MOH chart below,” as this would “give us a sense of the ratio between quarantined linked, and unquarantined linked.”
This way, the effectivity of the government’s efforts to ringfence areas where infections have been found may be evaluated.
She added that Singapore “should expect the virus to try to batter our doors down, or seep through side windows or below the doors.”
In order to fight this, vaccination is key, Mdm Ho.
“So the best protection is to vaccinate – this is like giving everyone an invisible and highly breathable mask that stays on guard 24/7 to protect us all the time. “
Mdm Ho noted that the Covid patients in Singapore who have needed to be put on oxygen are people older than 60, adding that at the moment less than 70 per cent of Singaporeans age 70 and over have been vaccinated.
“This leaves between 120,000 to 150,000 of our PG folks still highly exposed. They are naked as far as the virus is concerned, and they are at high risk of going into critical or worst outcomes.”
She encouraged everyone to help get senior citizens and elderly Singaporeans to go get vaccinated against Covid-19.
“Sure, 1 shot is not as protective as 2 shots, but let’s start with that 1st step to give some baseline protection against severe and critical illness.
Let’s change the risks of Covid into the risks of a bad flu by vaccinating.”
/TISG
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