Singaporean officials may stop publishing daily COVID-19 case tallies

According to the post-pandemic roadmap outlined by leaders in Singapore, COVID-19 will soon be treated “like flu,” with monitoring conducted only on the most severe cases, death rates, and intensive care hospital capacity. As health ministers in Singapore noted, “We can’t eradicate [the coronavirus]. But we can turn the pandemic into something much less threatening, like influenza, hand, foot and mouth disease, or chickenpox, and get on with our lives.”

In an editorial written for the Straits Times, the government officials explained that “Because the changes of falling very ill from influenza are so low, people live with it. They carry on with their daily activities even during the flu season, taking simple precautions or getting an annual flu jab. Doing so will be our priority in the coming months.”

Also part of the small Asian city-state’s plan moving forward is a reduced emphasis on broad-based testing requirements and on vigorous contact tracing, though testing of arrivals at its border will likely continue. Ultimately, as the ministers concluded, “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.”

The decision in Singapore to ease reporting of coronavirus case numbers on a regular basis is one that is gaining traction in America as well, with a number of states currently scaling back the frequency with which they publish virus-related data, as NPR reports.

With Florida and Oklahoma, for instance, having already moved to once-weekly case number reporting, and several other states dropping far below the daily reports produced at the height of the pandemic, it is no surprise that there are some critics who believe things are moving much too quickly in terms of putting the coronavirus crisis in the rear view mirror.

Beth Blauer of the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins University told NPR, “I think it’s absolutely appropriate for us to celebrate the progress we’ve made, but we still are very much navigating a pandemic. We haven’t gotten to the point where we can stake victory.”

Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, however, suggests that Singapore’s approach to treating COVID-19 much more like the flu is a wise one, saying, “Things are very, very different now then they were six months ago. And we’ve also got to think about how we’re allocating resources.”

It is evident to just about everyone that Americans are more than ready to move on from the devastation wrought by onerous coronavirus restrictions and the data manipulation some believe led to them. Whether the Democrat governors and mayors who reveled in scaring the public into compliance are prepared to relinquish the last vestiges of such control, however, remains to be seen. (Main Street Gazette)