Singapore shifts from “failure” to role model? Former Australian Prime Minister points to Singapore as a role model for Covid-19 response

Singapore has recently been hailed a standard to measure up to with regard to its Covid-19 response by former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. In a recent public post, he called out the current Australian government’s failure to follow suit, saying the reason for this is that it “does not want to be accountable.”

This news serves as an interesting turnaround for Singapore considering that just a little over a year ago, about two months after the international health crisis was called a pandemic, its Covid-19 response was hailed as a disaster by an Australian communicable diseases specialist.

In May 2020, when discussing Singapore’s learning curve with the Covid-19 pandemic, Melbourne-based Mike Toole, who specialises in communicable diseases stated in an interview with ABC News “Australia really focused on Singapore but Singapore is one of the greatest failures in the world now.” This statement came in line with his comparison between Singapore and Vietnam’s handling of Covid-19, as at the time, Vietnam had a drastically lower number of confirmed Covid-19 cases. “Vietnam is not in that situation. I think it’s a remarkable achievement for such a huge country.”

However, Singapore managed to make a stunning comeback, even taking the number one spot in Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking at the end of April 2021, which named it “the place to be” in a Covid-19 world.

Mr Turnbull made reference to a few specific measures utilized by Singapore that Australia could follow. “Singapore is providing the most detailed data on the pandemic, hospitalisations by vaccination category, vaccinations, etc,” the former leader of Australia’s opposition wrote. “Why can’t we do the same?”

Almost seven hours following this first Tweet, Mr Turnbull published yet another one as a reply to his original one. “The answer is we can and we should,” he said. “The only reason we haven’t is because the government does not want to be accountable.”

Singapore is providing the most detailed data on the pandemic, hospitalisations by vaccination category, vaccinations etc. Why can’t we do the same? https://t.co/pvlIPIiiYQ

— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) July 9, 2021

The answer is we can and we should. The only reason we haven’t is because the government does not want to be accountable.

— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) July 9, 2021