Advising that Singaporeans should still be vigilant and keep up protocol despite quarantine measures in China appearing to slow down the spread of the nCoV, Ho Ching wrote that Singapore’s high quality infection control had a big part to play in the containment of the virus.
In a Facebook post on Feb 12, the Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Holdings and Prime Minister (PM) Lee Hsien Loong’s wife Mdm Ho Ching cautioned Singaporeans that, “Now is not the time to relax yet!”
Praising Singapore for the work that healthcare staff have done, she wrote: “In SG, we have not just relied on temperature checks of all travellers coming in at the airports, via the walk through thermal fever scanners;
We are very thankful that both visitors as well as locals have been responsible in reporting sick at clinics or hospitals when they felt unwell – responsible patients and responsible suspected cases is the first important line of public health defence, along with good personal hygiene standards for the general public;
We have followed up with diligent and meticulous contact tracing, and instituted government or home quarantine, or hospital isolation, depending on the likelihood of contracting the nCoV”.
She also added that the free and high quality healthcare that was provided, as well as the contact tracing done helped in minimizing the spread of the virus.
Mdm Ho wrote that she thought it was “silly to ostracise nurses or other medical workers, just because we read of hospital staff falling sick in other countries”.
She added that the data on Singapore’s numbers are also highly reliable, and “probably a very good reflection of how a new emergent infection spreads in a population”.
In an update to her post, she cautioned that “The Chinese have revised their criteria for recognizing a COVID case – so long as they have pneumonia from a scan, they are being classified as a COVID (i suppose until proven otherwise. So expect a big jump in reported case numbers as the total data is now reset to a different level”. /TISG