MMTF’s Covid-19 Strategy Crumbles, Singapore Now on Verge of Another CB

  • Posted byby ChinHan

Just yesterday, in an abrupt overturning of the Health Minister’s bold statement, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong warned that covid-19 cases were rising exponentially and urged Singaporeans to scale back their social activities.

Since the pandemic started, Singapore has been constantly in and out of lockdowns and heightened alert. Whenever there was an attempt to reopen the country, cases invariably rose and tightening of measures would follow.

However, the Multi-Ministry Taskforce (MMTF) assured the public that when the target of an 80% vaccination rate is achieved, Singapore could move on to the next phase of reopening as Singaporeans would have to learn adjust to Covid-19 being endemic.

In recent weeks, despite the sharp increase in Covid-19 cases, the Ministry of Health said the rise was “not unexpected”. Keen to push through with the MMTF’s “endemic” plan, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said it was unrealistic to trace and suppress every cluster. He added that with a high vaccination rate, Singaporeans have to choose to live with Covid-19.

Just yesterday, in an abrupt overturning of the Health Minister’s bold statement, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong warned that covid-19 cases were rising exponentially and urged Singaporeans to scale back their social activities, even saying that the government is not ruling out a return to a circuit breaker or heightened alert should cases in the ICU rise sharply.

Clearly, the MMTF ministers do not have a unified strategy of handling the pandemic with one obviously contradicting the other. Not only are they confusing Singaporeans with back and forth statements, they are causing Singaporeans to lose confidence in the government’s response to the pandemic.

Singaporeans feel as if they have been conned by the government when time and again the government backs out on its initial criteria for reopening and loosening restrictions. The situation looks bleak for the country as despite a high vaccination rate, cases have not been coming under control and the possibility of another lockdown looks increasingly near.

It worries us that these two 4G ministers Lawrence Wong and Ong Ye Kung are widely identified as the two likely candidates for the PM position. If this is how they are taking the country through this Covid-19 crisis, it scares us to think what the future of Singapore would be under their charge.