Covid-19 Virus is Endemic

By Health Digest

Transcript:
Almost two years into the novel coronavirus pandemic, the Singapore government has moved from a pandemic to an endemic phase of managing the Covid-19 virus. Among the key reasons is the delta variant. It is more contagious than the alpha variant, primarily among unvaccinated people. Singapore will start its vaccine booster programme on Sept 14 for vulnerable groups like the elderly and immunocompromised. The city-state has one of the highest vaccination rates globally, where four out of five people are fully inoculated.

Transiting to an endemic phase is hope to ease the strain on hospitals. The key is not to pick up every asymptomatic case. Instead, the Ministry of Health will look out for those who will get ill, monitor those who will get complications, and hospitalize them properly. It will also expand a pilot to let more vaccinated people recover at home and cut local quarantine from 14 days to 10 days next week.

Singapore confirmed 555 new locally transmitted COVID-19 infection cases and five imported cases on Sept 11. The Ministry of Health said that bringing the total tally in the city-state 71,167.

Quick on the heels of Singapore is its neighbour, Malaysia. Speaking at the press conference, the Malaysia Health Minister said with the delta variant, scientists worldwide believed that achieving herd immunity would not be easy. Putrajaya accepts the Covid-19 virus as endemic and will begin the transition by the end of October with a higher vaccinations rate are achieved.

According to the Health director-general, Malaysia confirmed 19,550 new locally transmitted COVID-19 infection cases on Sept 11. The Ministry of Health said that bringing the total tally to 1.98 million. 592 deaths were recorded, including 88 who were dead on arrival at the hospital or brought in dead. This brings Malaysia's death tally to over 20,000 deaths at 20,419.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has launched a new build of the MySejahtera app. It features a new Check-Out button, vaccination status, and the user's risk level on a single display.






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