SINGAPORE — China has experienced a surge in Covid-19 infections recently after Beijing dropped most of the pandemic restrictions early in December.
Most recently, an estimated 250 million people, or 18 per cent of the population, have gotten infected from Dec 1 to 20 since measures that had been in place for almost three years were removed.
However, infectious disease experts in Singapore have said that largely due to the country’s high vaccination rate, there may not be a need to impose stricter entry requirements for individuals travelling from China to Singapore.
China is now battling record numbers of new infections, and hospitals in some cities have had a shortage of beds and medical staff. There have been shortages of test kits and medications as well, including drugs prescribed for fever and colds, to the extent that Chinese nationals overseas, including those in Singapore, have been sending paracetamol back home via mail.
Despite China’s increase in infections, infectious disease experts in Singapore have said there’s no need for further restrictions for travellers from China.
Dr Paul Tambyah, president of the Asia-Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection, was quoted in TODAY as saying, “The incidence of new cases in China does not appear to be more than in other temperate countries such as Germany, France and the United States, at this time. Furthermore, there is little evidence that travel restrictions work.”
This view is shared by infectious disease expert at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, Dr Leong Hoe Nam, and vice-dean of Global Health at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health associate professor Hsu Li Yang, who cited Singapore’s high vaccine take-up rates.
An exception may be the case if a worrisome variant of the coronavirus arises in China.
“If we were having tens of thousands of cases a day earlier in the year and yet still the epidemic could not sustain itself, then we should not expect what might be a few hundred cases a day from China to have much epidemiological impact,” Associate Professor Alex Cook, vice-dean of research at NUS’ Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health told TODAY.
This is what other experts have said may happen.
Dr Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University, is quoted in a recent AP report as saying, “China has a population that is very large and there’s limited immunity. And that seems to be the setting in which we may see an explosion of a new variant.”
This is because each new infection means a chance for the virus to mutate, and thus the large numbers infected in China are seen as a possible cause for concern.
Dr Ray added, “When we’ve seen big waves of infection, it’s often followed by new variants being generated.” /TISG