Singapore has managed to keep the number of COVID-19 fatalities “very low" with a death rate of 0.2 per cent, a senior minister said on Monday, acknowledging that the healthcare system in the city-state was “stressed" but not overwhelmed. The COVID-19 death rate of 0.2 per cent is comparable to catching pneumonia, Senior Minister of State for Health Janil Puthucheary said in a ministerial statement in Parliament on the country’s ICU and hospital capacity.
“But it does mean that over time, the absolute number of deaths from COVID-19 will rise despite the best possible medical care, and we could have 2,000 deaths per year. Most of these will be the elderly and already unwell," the Channel News Asia quoted Puthucheary as saying.
Puthucheary said that the number of deaths has increased in the past two months as the overall case count rose but Singapore has managed to keep fatalities “very low".
He said that about 99 per cent of the country’s COVID-19 cases have had mild or no symptoms because of the high vaccination coverage.
He stressed that having one of the lowest fatality rates in the world is a small miracle, which did not happen by chance. It happened because Singaporeans stood together, looked out for each other, did their duty, and put the interests of others ahead of their own," he said.
He also noted that Singapore’s healthcare system is currently “stressed, but it has not been overwhelmed". This is unlike the situation last year in many countries which experienced “excess mortality" and patients had to be turned away, he said.
Puthucheary also told the House that resignation rates among healthcare workers are up this year amid a manpower crunch in hospitals. About 1,500 healthcare workers resigned in the first half of 2021, compared to about 2,000 annually pre-pandemic, the Channel reported citing the Minister of State.
Foreign healthcare workers have also resigned in bigger numbers, he added. Close to 500 foreign doctors and nurses resigned in the first half of 2021, compared to around 500 in the whole of 2020 and around 600 in 2019.
These resignations were mostly tendered for personal reasons, for migration, or moving back to their home countries, he said. Singapore reported 407 COVID-19 fatalities as of noon on Sunday, out of which 395 died in hospital, eight at home and four at care facilities.
As of Saturday, Singapore reported a total of 198,374 COVID-19 cases. “Excess mortality is when a lot more people than you expect die in a year. We are trying hard to avoid that, by keeping restrictions tight last year when our population was vulnerable to the disease, and then cautiously opening up after we vaccinated the vast majority of our population," the minister said.
Although Singapore is trying to live with COVID-19, it “cannot just open up" to economic activities and risk having cases shoot up, Puthucheary said.
“We are trying to get to the point where the combination of high vaccination rates, booster jabs and even more boosting from mild infections means that COVID-19 will no longer spread as an epidemic in Singapore. And we are trying to get there without excess mortality," he said. He said that the Ministry of Health and the healthcare teams will continue to train staff, increase beds and expand ICU capacity.
Transport Minister S Iswaran also told the House that it is more important that the process of reopening Singapore’s borders be done well rather than scaling up quickly. As such, the vaccinated travel lane (VTL) scheme is being expanded step by step, he said in the Parliament. VTL scheme allows flights from countries with low COVID-19 numbers.
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