Singapore is aiming for a feat no country has achieved so far: reopen to the world and emerge from the pandemic with a death toll still in the double digits.
While the US and UK have plowed headlong into reopening their economies, their failure to contain the virus early on resulted in hundreds of thousands of fatalities. Vaccine hesitancy is also providing a reality check for strategies that treated inoculation as the magic bullet.
They earlier pledged to begin easing restrictions once half the population was vaccinated; that milestone came and went on July 19. Like other so-called Covid Zero countries, which eliminated the virus with aggressive rules and border curbs, Singapore has lower levels of natural immunity, which makes opening up borders that have kept the virus in check for so long a daunting proposition.
While those leading the pandemic response say they expect to treat Covid as an endemic infection, much like influenza, the flu can infect a thousand people in Singapore every day during peak season. It’s hard to imagine political and public health leaders that have shut down the country over a smaller number of often mild Covid infections standing by if 1,000 people a day come down with Covid.
While flattening the curve and getting to herd immunity via vaccination was a goal of many nations, Singapore may show whether it’s attainable. Others, including the Maldives, the United Arab Emirates and Malta, are also flirting with the 80% vaccination rate that Singapore has targeted, though they suffered broader outbreaks that provide some natural immunity.
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