MV TELEGRAPH

SINGAPORE – Rising Covid-19 infections and deaths test Singapore’s long-term strategy to treat coronavirus as endemic.

Around 82% of the city-state’s population was fully vaccinated, data from the Ministry of Health showed. However, a surge in Covid cases – the vast majority of which have no or mild symptoms – prompted the government to tighten social distancing measures starting this week.

Many of these cases were discovered because Singapore is “doing a lot of surveillance for Covid” through testing, said Ashley St. John, associate professor at Duke-NUS Medical School. But the country may have to change its methods to live with the virus, she added.

“Other things we do, like social distancing, can be useful for a period of time to control those spikes in cases,” St. John told CNBC’s Street Signs Asia on Friday.

“But we really need to start changing the way we think: from a containment and elimination strategy for Covid to living with the virus in our community, but what kinds of actions can we take to achieve this? less severe to those exposed, “she said.

Health system under pressure

The Singapore Ministry of Health announced Thursday that more than 28,000 Covid infections have been detected in the past 28 days. Of these, 98.1% had no or mild symptoms, while 0.1% died, the ministry said.

A total of 1,360 cases were in hospitals by Thursday noon, the ministry said. Of these, 204 are serious illnesses that require oxygen supplementation, and 34 are in intensive care.

On a cumulative basis, the Southeast Asian country has reported more than 96,500 Covid cases and 95 deaths, according to data from the Ministry of Health.

When announcing the recent tightening of the Covid measures, the Ministry of Health said last week that the rapid increase in infections had “burdened” the health system. It added that many infected people with mild symptoms sought medical attention in hospitals, although it may not be required.

The Singapore government has started allowing those infected with mild symptoms to recover at home if – among other things – they are fully vaccinated. It acknowledged that home recovery protocols are new and can be improved.

Alternative plan

In recent months, the government has relaxed and tightened the Covid measures several times as the highly contagious Delta variant is spreading in the country.

According to the opposition Singapore Democratic Party, this has made the government appear “hesitant” to turn away from a “zero covid” strategy. The SDP has no elected member in parliament.

“The government is theoretically moving away … from the zero-covid strategy, but the measures are a bit hesitant,” Paul Tambyah, chairman of the SDP and an infectious disease specialist, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Friday. .

The party has proposed a plan to exit the pandemic, including stopping testing of asymptomatically vaccinated people outside of contact tracing and removing “widespread closures and restrictions”.

The plan is designed to ensure that health care resources are focused on people at risk who suffer from serious illnesses and prevent deaths, said Tambyah, who is also president of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection.

“Right now, one of the concerns is that many asymptomatic people are being tested, many blanket closings are being made, and this is redirecting resources that ideally should be focused on the sick,” he said.

A Pregnant woman getting an ultrasound

Kemal Yildirim | E+ | Getty Images

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday that Covid-19 deaths among pregnant women reached a record high of 21 in August, urging expectant mothers to get vaccinated against the virus.

Just 31% of pregnant women nationwide are vaccinated, even though pregnant women with Covid are likelier to experience dangerous symptoms that jeopardize their infants’ health, she said. Walensky’s comments came just a day after the CDC announced a health advisory for pregnant women to get vaccinated to reduce the risk of contracting a severe case of Covid.

“Compared with pregnant women without Covid, pregnant women with Covid are more likely to have a preterm birth or a stillbirth,” Walensky said during a presentation to the Infectious Disease Society of America. “And this very much demonstrates with a huge amount of evidence that pregnant women are at high risk of Covid-19, and their babies are at high risk as well.”

More than 120,000 pregnant women in the U.S. have been diagnosed with Covid, and Walensky added that more than 5,000 pregnant women have participated in the agency’s vaccine safety monitoring programs. Roughly half of those studied received the Pfizer vaccine, about 44% got Moderna’s and approximately 5% were immunized by Johnson & Johnson.

Walensky said that studying the participants enabled the CDC to determine that Covid vaccines have no impact on increasing the potential for miscarriage. CDC officials expanded on those findings at a Sept. 22 meeting of the agency’s vaccine advisory committee, reporting a 12.8% risk of miscarriage by the 20th week of gestation among 2,456 pregnant individuals inoculated with Pfizer or Moderna.

The risk of miscarriage measured in the study aligns with the normal risk of miscarriage after adjusting for the mom’s age, officials said. But unvaccinated pregnant women are more than twice as likely than non-pregnant women to need intensive care and a ventilator when they contract Covid, Walensky added.

The CDC studied 1,634 babies born to mothers immunized against Covid as well, reporting 45 with birth defects — similar rates as babies born to healthy mothers. There were also 99 preterm infants, 45 considered small for their gestational age and 158 requiring intensive care. Officials found no evidence of rare types or clusters of birth defects.

Researchers from the HealthPartners Institute also told the CDC’s advisory panel that Covid vaccines are not associated with stillbirths. An analysis of the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink found that pregnant people inoculated against Covid delivered 11,300 live births and 26 stillbirths from December through July. The majority of the stillbirths in the study resulted from placental complications, obstetric complications and maternal comorbidities.

Cardiologists perform a procedure on a patient at Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England on March 17, 2021.

Joe Giddens | PA pictures | Getty Images

Doctors and health care workers in the UK could be accommodated in hotels to ensure they can go to work as the UK gasoline crisis continues.

British motorists have panicked their fuel purchases for the past week as a major shortage of truck drivers impacted shipments of gasoline and other goods across the country. The situation resulted in doctors and other key personnel being given priority access to fuel earlier this week.

Saffron Cordery, deputy general manager of NHS Providers – a health services affiliate within the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) – told CNBC in an email that workers were struggling to refuel their vehicles and get to work despite ministers Government assured the public that supply is starting to stabilize.

“This is a particular problem for NHS workers who provide services in the community and for remote wards,” she said Thursday. “Trusts will work with national NHS teams and their local partners to ensure that disruption for patients is minimized, including through changes in work patterns for community staff and, if necessary, through accommodation in local hotels.”

NHS hospitals and some other health services in England are run by more than 200 geographically designated trusts run by directors.

“Trust Leaders tell us that ambulance fuel supplies will not be cut. But reports that non-emergency patient transport services are having problems accessing fuel and the knock-on effects this could have on vulnerable patients are worrying, ”added Cordery.

Meanwhile, Matthew Taylor, chairman of the board of directors of the NHS Confederation – an affiliate for the health system in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – urged the government to encourage people not to panic about buying fuel, which he believes could affect patient care .

“The NHS has a number of emergency measures they can take on-site if there are problems with the hospital, usually in very bad weather,” Taylor said via email on Thursday.

“However, many health and care workers across the country rely on their cars to get to work in society.”

UK government ministers have taken some steps in the past few days to mitigate the effects of the petrol shortage which has left large parts of petrol stations across the country running out of fuel. These measures include temporary visas for truck drivers, suspending competition laws for the fuel industry, and even mobilizing the army to conduct fuel deliveries.

The government has also urged people to buy fuel as usual, claiming that the situation is now starting to stabilize.

Taylor, of the NHS Confederation, told CNBC on Thursday that two-thirds of its members had already said before the fuel crisis that the understaffing is jeopardizing patient care and safety – and that fuel crisis could add to some of the stresses caused by the Covid crisis. 19 pandemic.

“Any disruption caused by the ‘gasoline panic’ could worsen this and affect the delivery of vital supplies,” he said. “With the NHS preparing for what is likely to be a very busy winter, the situation is incredibly worrying.”

Throughout the pandemic, NHS services built a large backlog of patients waiting to be treated or treated by specialists as lockdowns, isolation of health workers and doctors being transferred to Covid wards disrupted normal operations .

Earlier this month, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that his administration would raise taxes from April to provide the NHS with additional funding to help it tackle the waiting list build-up.