Health Minister Mr Ong Ye Kung has said on Thursday (19 Aug) that the government’s decision to go back to Phase Two Heightened Alert (P2HA) on 22 July has in fact saved many lives.
He also said that if we did not go back to P2HA when the Jurong Fishery Port cluster came out, the death toll would have been much more.
He has acknowledged public sentiments and fears about the recent amount of deaths due to Covid-19 complications.
There has been nine out of 46 Covid-19 deaths in Singapore in August alone.
Minister Ong also mentioned that the death toll was what the task force was concerned about when the Jurong Fishery Port cluster broke out, especially when many unvaccinated seniors are amongst those numbers.
He added that even though those that has unfortunately passed on due to the complications carried highly transmissible Delta variants, the number of patients in ICU has been declining steadily.
There were 19 such admissions in the past three weeks, and Minister Ong hopes this number will remain low as more people receive their vaccinations.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) has also showed evidence that vaccination significantly reduces the need for intensive care or oxygen.
Nine percent non-vaccinated personnel who are infected required intensive care and oxygen and one percent of them passed on compared to 1.3 percent of vaccinated personnel required intensive care and oxygen and 0.1 of them passed on.
MOH also added that since the P2HA came into force in July 22, the number of cases has steadily declined which allowed the Government to finally ease more rules on August 10.
As of Tuesday (17 August), the case count has halved to about 63 a day compared to 123 weeks ago and isolated numbers have remained stable at half of the total cases detected.
Unliked cases have also remained stable at a quarter of the total reported cases.
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