Singapore: The much-needed vaccine to combat the coronavirus will take at least one year before it becomes available widely, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Sunday, urging the people to “learn to live” with COVID-19 for a long time.
He asked Singaporeans to play their part in limiting the spread of the virus by maintaining personal hygiene, wearing masks, observing safe distancing rules and avoiding crowded gatherings.
“It will take at least a year, probably longer, before vaccines become widely available,” said Lee in the first of six national broadcasts on Singapore’s future after the COVID-19 pandemic in the coming days. We will have to learn to live with COVID-19 for the long term, as we have done in the past with other dangerous infectious diseases, like tuberculosis,” Lee said.
The prime minister also highlighted Singapore’s progress in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. New cases in the wider community have come down and the situation in foreign workers living in dormitories has stabilised, Lee said.
This has allowed the country to ease strict circuit breaker measures, he said, adding that the contact tracing and testing will be stepped up to detect the coronavirus cases earlier, isolate their contacts, and prevent clusters from forming. “If all goes well and the outbreak remains firmly under control, we will ease up further (on measures to control the spread of coronavirus), and resume more activities as soon as possible,” he said.
The prime minister said that beyond the public health impact, COVID-19 had become a serious economic, social and political problem. “It is in fact the most dangerous crisis humanity has faced in a very long time… We are in a totally unprecedented situation,” he said.
Pointing to the global economy having virtually ground to a halt, Lee said the governments have spent trillions of dollars to support businesses, economies and jobs, but still tens of millions of jobs have been lost.
Singapore’s domestic economy has also taken a severe hit. (PTI)
