A country that has been one of the world’s most successful at combating Covid-19 has announced it will soon fundamentally change how it manages the

Singapore’s surprising new plan to ‘live with covid’ revealed

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2021-06-26 19:30:05

A country that has been one of the world’s most successful at combating Covid-19 has announced it will soon fundamentally change how it manages the pandemic.

There will be no goals of zero transmission. Quarantine will be dumped for travellers and close contact of cases will not have to isolate. It also plans to no longer announce daily case numbers.

“The bad news is that Covid-19 may never go away. The good news is that it is possible to live normally with it in our midst,” wrote Singapore’s trade Minister Gan Kim Yong, finance minister Lawrence Wong and health minister Ong Ye Kung said in an editorial in the Straits Times this week.

Like most countries, Singapore had an initial peak of cases last year, topping out at 600 cases a day in mid-April. Following a smaller wave in August, Covid-19 hasn’t flared up since.

However, the nation of 5.7 million, slightly larger than Sydney, has had a steady undercurrent of around 20-30 cases every day. The nation has recorded 35 deaths in total.