Experts Say S’pore Could Have 40,000 COVID-19 Cases by End of This Month, Just Half of China’s Cases

Covid-19’s like the typical girl every man would’ve once dated at least once in their lives.

It just gives you conflicting messages all the time.

On one hand, local community cases are dropping like the money in my bank account.

On another hand, experts are saying it could balloon all the way up to 40,000 cases, half of China’s total number of Covid-19 cases which stands at 83,968.

Now, before you run around screaming, it’s not all bad according to Associate Professor Alex Cook, vice-dean of research at the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.

“It’s A Good Thing.”

Professor Cook said that although our numbers are increasing daily, it has dropped from our daily peak of 1,496 and has seemingly stabilised.

The number of new cases reported for the past 13 days was all below 1,000.

While we might hit the big four-zero, he predicted, it’s a good thing because the goal was never totally about the number of cases.

It’s about “flattening the curve”, allowing the number of cases to grow without having it explode on us, like what happened in Italy.

Plus, when you think about it, the difficulty of Covid-19 isn’t about keeping numbers down, it’s about trying to find all of them so that they can be stamped out.

So in a way, having a high number simply means we’re really good at ferreting it out.

Figures Should Remain Around The Same Level

Dr Leong Hoe Nam, the doctor who has been talking about Covid-19 since day one, says he expects the number of new cases reported daily to stabilise around 500 to 800.

Singapore, he added, has likely passed the peak of the Covid-19.

Of course, there might be some fluctuations.

We Could Be Seeing Zero Community Cases

Professor Paul Tambyah from NUS’ Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine agreed with his fellow experts and said that both within and without the dormitories, things like:

• identification and isolation
• contact tracing
• quarantine
• monitoring

can help to control the spread of the coronavirus.

With all these implemented, “there is a good chance” that the number of daily community cases can be reduced all the way to zero like back in February.

He added that the same approach, in a larger form, can be used in the dormitories as well.

But Don’t Let Down Your Guard, Eh?

Covid-19 is tricky, just like when your girlfriend asked, eh, what should we eat for dinner before CB kicked in.

While numbers look good right now, the government has been hard at work telling people that this could just be the calm before a storm.

Yesterday, it was revealed that MOH has been conducting tests on patients’ samples since 2007 and 13 of them were tested positive in the Sentinel programme.

It’s also even more tricky since asymptomatic transmission, where people who don’t show symptoms and might not even know they have it spreads the virus to others.

That’s the reason why we’re all getting locked down as though we have the virus.

So make sure to always wear your mask if you have to go out, eh? Now that the government’s giving more masks, you got no more excuses liao.

Meanwhile, I’m going to go binge-watch Good Casting, the new K-drama on Viu right now.