Pace of reopening amid Covid-19 depends on price Singapore is willing to pay, say experts
SINGAPORE - How Singapore moves forward in dealing and living with Covid-19 depends on the price the country is willing to pay to achieve this. There is no perfect option and it is a matter of choosing "the best set of trade-offs that we would wish to have", said Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, an infectious diseases expert at the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. He was one of three panellists at The Straits Times discussion, Living With Covid-19: When And How?, on Thursday (Sept 16). Prof Hsu said severe illness and deaths will rise as measures ease, but aiming for no deaths means the constraints on society will be extremely high: "We haven't talked about what we might want to accept in terms of the cost of living with Covid-19." Singapore has close to 75,000 Covid-19 cases, of whom 59 people have died. There are now 77 people seriously ill and 12 in critical condition. The nation can open up faster if it is willing to accept six or seven deaths a day. It may not be able to do that if it wants to keep the death toll closer to what one sees for influenza, which is two a day, he said. Professor Ooi Eng Eong of Duke-NUS Medical School said at the discussion that Singapore'...
