No one would have imagined at the start of 2020 that the world would be grappling with
a pandemic by March.
As governments scramble to respond, the virus has spread to over 140 countries, causing
turmoil in the global economy and disrupting supply chains.
So, how can governments prepare for a viral outbreak before it spirals out of control?
The disease, which is officially known as COVID-19, was first reported to the
World Health Organization on the last day of 2019.
With the death toll rising daily, governments have imposed travel restrictions and
social distancing measures in a bid to contain the pandemic.
In an extreme case, China imposed a lockdown on the city of Wuhan’s 11 million inhabitants
on January 23, the first of many draconian measures, including surveillance and enforcement.
But is this the only way to contain a virus?
Masks, thermometers, quarantine notices and travel restrictions.
These are some of the tools governments are using to try to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
Global deaths and infections surpassed those inside China for the first time
on the 16th of March. Three days later, China hit a milestone with
no new local infections reported.
However outside of China, the number of infections continue to climb, with each country adopting
a different approach to stem the spread of the virus.
As the public and private sectors race to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus,
innovations to help identify or limit the spread are also equally important, if not more.
These solutions include drive-through temperature screenings now seen in places like South Korea
and the U.S. and even remote monitoring systems now being used in Hong Kong.
Biofourmis is a digital therapeutics company, and digital therapeutics is a new category
of medicine, where you’re essentially using software to treat and manage a disease.
This technology, it was developed for heart disease and the likes.
So what was the point that you realized that it could be applied to this new disease?
In a matter of two weeks, our team built together and customized our existing solution for COVID-19,
which is geared towards remotely monitoring patients to detect early signs of symptoms.
The medical device, known as the Everion, is worn by the user on the arm.
I got a first-hand look at how it works.
It has medical-grade sensors imbedded, and it captures 20-plus physiological parameters.
What are the most important ones when we’re talking about coronavirus detection?
The most important ones are heart rate, heart rate variability, respiration rate,
blood oxygen saturation and also skin temperature.
And then all the information will be transmitted to the clinician dashboard.
So this, the clinicians can view all the patients under one page.
The company is working with the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong health authorities
to remotely monitor patients who are quarantined or already diagnosed with COVID-19.
The platform can be used by drug companies in their clinical trials, to understand the
efficacy and effectiveness of the drug.
Are there any plans to roll this out beyond Hong Kong?
Currently, we have been in discussion with multiple government authorities including
Singapore, the United States, Australia, Italy, South Korea.
When a pandemic like COVID-19 breaks, time is of an essence.
So multiple people, or stakeholders in the industry need to come together.
People who are actually building diagnostics for COVID-19, people who are innovating to
build novel therapies and treatment.
You need to start working with regulatory agencies, start working with government agencies
who are going to take initiatives to roll the programme out.
But these tools are only as effective as the people and policies attempting to contain a virus.
Outside China, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have been highlighted for their efforts
to curb the outbreak, involving not just the government, but the private sector and citizens too.
Professor Fong Kok Yong is the co-chair of a disease outbreak task force in SingHealth,
a cluster of healthcare institutions in Singapore.
All health systems are designed to treat patients during peacetime.
Therefore, no health system is designed to just meet with any unknown pathogen or in
this case, an epidemic.
It’s important to have a task force to make sure that we are prepared.
Our main role is to harmonize. Make sure that things are done in a correct way, share practices.
Dr. Danielle Anderson is a scientist and one of the many people in Singapore involved in
the fight against the pandemic.
We were prepared because as someone who works on coronaviruses previously, we were looking
at the outbreak in Wuhan.
And so prior to patients in Singapore, we already had a plan in place of what should
we do when we get patients.
Samples from infected patients are sent to Danielle and her colleagues for analysis.
What we’re doing is trying to isolate the virus from those samples and then looking
at changes in the virus and then we feedback to the hospital.
How close are we to a vaccine?
We still have some way to go.
We really have to make sure that what we’re doing is not harming people, and that what
we’re giving them is no worse than the disease.
In the timeline, I would guess that we’re at least 18 months away for the vaccine to
actually be deployed to the general population.
A crisis of this magnitude calls for a global response.
That’s where international agencies like the World Health Organization
and the International Monetary Fund come in.
We have about $50 billion dollars that are available to low-income countries and to emerging
market economies that can get access to this money without a program with the fund.
In other words, immediately.
The World Health Organization estimates that 89 million medical masks, 76 million
examination gloves and 1.6 million medical goggles will be needed each month
to respond to the pandemic adequately.
While it has shipped almost half a million sets of equipment to more than 47 countries,
supplies are rapidly depleting due to panic buying, hoarding and misuse.
Panic-buying of daily necessities and medical supplies such as masks and hand sanitizers
has been reported in many countries.
This has resulted in shortages, which puts frontline workers like doctors and nurses
at a higher risk in their line of work.
Economist Walter Theseira says the pandemic has revealed structural weaknesses in our
supply chains.
Many of our industries have had their supply chains disrupted to some extent or their trading
arrangement disrupted.
Because for example, you might have a factory or some process in Singapore that depends
on the supply of parts in China, and now the disruption has spread to Europe and spread
to the United States as well.
We cannot diversify against risks that happen in terms of our relationship to the rest of the world.
What we can do is we can try to ensure that we are more resilient to such shocks.
In response to the shortage in medical supplies, the private sector has stepped up too.
Companies like the French luxury group LVMH, Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn and Singapore
e-gaming company Razer have shifted their manufacturing plants to produce medical supplies.
What we see in some countries, very sadly, they may not have the test kits, public health
system may already be over capacity and overwhelmed.
They may not have the ability even in their police or security agencies to help out with
contact tracing.
They just don’t have the institutional capacity to do all of these things.
Many of us have these jobs where somebody is paying us even if we phoned in and say:
"Hey, you know, I’m sick, I can’t come into work today or tomorrow."
Many people don’t have that luxury.
That’s one of the key weaknesses that is now being exposed in many countries, that
the social and health insurance systems are just not set up, to give people the support
they need to be socially responsible.
Many countries have also imposed travel restrictions in a bid to halt the spread of the virus,
with some even going as far as to institute travel bans, despite the scepticism
of public health experts on their effectiveness.
Singapore’s Changi Airport is one of the world’s busiest airports, and while staff
there have been busy screening passengers for flu-like symptoms and disinfecting surfaces,
it hasn’t been easy to keep up.
As the situation is evolving very rapidly in different countries, travel restrictions
get imposed on different passengers coming from different countries, sometimes by the minute.
So here on the ground, this is the key challenge that I think we face in responding to the
evolving situation, working with airline partners, working with our enforcement agencies to respond
to all these changes, ensuring that the airport remains operational, to keep this space safe.
While having the right health policies is a step in the right direction, containing
a virus is not just the responsibility of governments, but citizens too.
This means being socially and psychologically responsible, such as practising good hygiene,
and not hoarding supplies unnecessarily.
I can summarise in an acronym called PACS.
P meaning be Prepared.
A meaning Adaptable.
C for Communication and we take communication very seriously.
The last, be Supportive.
If we are able to do all these, then it really helps any health system or any health care facilities.