Experts Believe High Surge in COVID-19 Cases Recently Was Due to CNY Period

2022-02-06 , 2:34 pm

On Friday (4 Feb), the Ministry of Health (MOH) reported the tripling of locally transmitted COVID-19 cases.

There were 13,046 recorded positive cases on Friday, which was a huge increase from 4,241 on Monday (31 Jan), and 6,120 new cases on Tuesday (1 Feb).

Five-Digit COVID-19 Cases Caused by Backlog

However, health experts have called for the public to stay calm as the high numbers are likely due to the backlog caused by the closure of most clinics over the Chinese New Year period.

“When the clinics re-opened on Thursday, there was a large backlog of cases which probably accounts for the sudden surge,” commented Professor Paul Tambyah, the President of the Asia-Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection.

The five-digit figures are a consequence of people waiting until after the Chinese New Year before getting officially diagnosed by a doctor.

His remark is supported by the fact that hospitals and clinics that remained open throughout the holidays had merely seen a steady increase of cases instead of a huge influx.

In fact, before Chinese New Year festivities began, the government’s mathematical model had already predicted that the number of cases would surge up to more than 13,000, with more pessimistic observations stating that it would go as high as 20,000.

All in all, experts reassure the public that the statistics shouldn’t cause any undue alarm, though it does suggest that the Omicron cases are heightening and have yet to reach its peak.

A similar phenomenon had occurred in the United States over the New Year’s, where the compilation of the backlog had led to a record one million COVID-19 case spike.

Government Response to the Surge

In spite of the online speculation that tighter COVID-19 safety management measures will return, the government shows no indication of moving towards that trajectory.

The catalyst for tighter social restrictions is typically severe diseases.

The current Omicron wave running rampant in Singapore might appear terrifying with its enhanced transmissibility and uptick of infections, but the rate of people being hospitalised still hover around the same figures, while only 23 out of the 375 available Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds have been occupied.

The current occupancy of ICU cases is one-tenth of what the rates were months ago, when Singapore was confronted with the other variants like Delta, Beta, and Alpha.

80% of the current COVID-19 cases were detected through Antigen Rapid Tests (ARTs), signifying that the fully vaccinated patients are only suffering from mild to imperceptible symptoms, and are of low risk.

The government is maintaining the belief that that it is more important to protect the vulnerable, give out more booster shots—which has already been administered to 59% of the eligible population—, and to continue exercising caution in all social situations.

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Stress on the Healthcare System

For General Practitioner (GP) Clinics that were open for the holidays, they noted a marked influx of walk-in patients, with some patients suffering from Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI).

On Wednesday morning (2 Feb), the Chief Executive of the Northeast Medical Group, Dr Tan Teck Jack informed The Straits Times that one of the eight clinics it operates saw ten positive COVID-19 cases after ART.

Similarly for Parkway Shenton, Medical Director Dr Edwin Chng noted that the clinics saw longer queues during the Chinese New Year holidays.

For its Punggol branch in particular, it even ran out of ART kits which forced them to shift their pre-existing stocks towards that location.

For the same reasons, Dr Tan urges patients with mild or non-urgent symptoms to self-isolate and monitor their own health instead of jamming up the queues for the high-risk individuals like the elderly and immunocompromised that genuinely require medical assistance.

Honestly, the medical staff don’t receive enough thanks for their tireless and ever-responsive dedication to their professions throughout the entire pandemic.

Endemic in Sight

To put things in a brighter perspective, 99.7% of COVID-19 cases recently have either been asymptomatic or had very mild symptoms, according to Associate Professor Jeremy Lim and the MOH.

The gradual relaxation of social restrictions happening world-wide is because the pandemic is showing trends where the new variants are becoming less fatal as time wears on.

An example of the contagion tampering down on its own is the Spanish Influenza of 1918, where the deadly virus went from killing one in 30 people in its initial waves before it was reduced to a dominant strain of a seasonal influenza from 1920 to 1957.

Therefore, there isn’t any reason why COVID-19 would behave differently, especially when it comes from the same strain of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1), the SARS outbreak that came and went in 2002 to 2004.

The existence of COVID-19 is the “new normal”, so to speak, and Dr Leong Hoe Nam, a pathology specialist at Mount Elizabeth Hospital even goes as far as declaring that getting COVID-19 is “a rite of passage for everyone living on earth”.

“It is unavoidable in practically all circumstances,” Dr Leong said.

It is bound to happen with its virulence, and we just have to live with it, like a seasonal flu that might affect some of us slightly worse than the others.

The only thing that we can do as a society is continue keeping up with the pre-existing cautionary measures and ensuring that our healthcare systems are sufficiently prepared for any surges or new variants.

(Touchwood. Touchwood. Touchwood. Important things must be said three times!)

In conclusion, there’s really no need to panic and worry if the end of times is coming with the shocking statistics.

The world will keep moving, we won’t be descending into chaos.

Life will go on as per normal, or as normal as we can possibly manage.