Singapore warns: “New variants arriving from China, let’s prepare for new waves of Covid”

The imminent start of the holiday season and the resumption of air travel could lead to a resurgence of infections in Asia and – potentially – also on other continents.

The alarm was raised in recent days by the Minister of Health of Singapore, Ong Ye Kung, according to which the reopening of China could trigger a new wave of infections: “With the arrival of Christmas and the New Year, people will travel again and we are destined to have more infections, but it’s not something new for us”🇧🇷 The minister added that during 2022 the country faced three waves caused by Omicron and more recently by subvariants BA.4 and BA.5.

The Singaporean cabinet member also warned the population to prepare for a potential new variant that will hit the Northern Hemisphere in the coming months, explaining that the easing of restrictions in China will lead to a resumption of international travel and likely an increase in cases: ” It seems that Beijing wants to change its policy to combat the pandemic. If it does, there will certainly be more infections and worrisome new variants are sure to emerge” said Ong Ye Kung.

Since the start of the pandemic, Singapore has recorded a record 2.1 million infections and only 1,706 deaths thanks to a very strict health emergency management strategy. The island city-state, with just under 5.5 million inhabitants, actually adopted the Covid Zero policy until October 2021, imposing long lockdowns, mandatory use of masks and, above all, an extremely effective and also envied vaccination campaign. by many Western countries. 🇧🇷 Only after immunizing a large part of the population did the government gradually lift restrictions. Today, as the Minister of Health explained, “we are left with very few rules and life is practically back to normal.