Planning for next pandemic a ‘balancing act’ of building capabilities and being adaptable: DPM Wong
SINGAPORE will broaden its range of “baseline scenarios” for pandemic planning, as there is no clear “worst case” scenario that can be defined and planned for, said a government White Paper that reviewed Singapore’s Covid-19 response and detailed lessons for the next pandemic.
But Singapore must stay adaptable even as it learns from experience, said Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in an interview with local media on the White Paper.
He noted that the next pandemic will differ from Covid-19, just as Covid-19 differed from the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) outbreak in 2003. “While the lessons will give us a better sense of preparedness, we must never fight the last war,” said Wong, who co-chaired the Covid-19 multi-ministry taskforce.
“We must not allow the lessons to become hard-coded into a certain doctrine that might lead us down the wrong path.” Planning for a pandemic is hence a “balancing act” of building capabilities while staying adaptable and nimble, he said.
The White Paper, released on Wednesday (Mar 8), set out seven lessons for future pandemics.
One of them is improving forward-planning capabilities. Wong noted that during Covid-19, government officials had to tackle the present situation while simultaneously anticipating future threats.
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Singapore should have “some dedicated officers focus just on anticipating what future scenarios might be and thinking hard about that”, he said, adding: “We will see how we can implement that in our crisis management systems for the future.”
The White Paper noted that Singapore’s Sars experience allowed it to “avoid a cold start”, but “in building pandemic preparedness on a Sars model, we had not adequately challenged certain assumptions”. For instance, the system was focused on managing outbreaks in hospitals and not the wider community.
Another lesson is to strengthen resilience. This includes reviewing the resources needed to maintain appropriate buffers in hospital bed capacity, stockpiles and other pandemic-related requirements.
“We will review our stockpiling strategies and improve diversification of critical supplies by working upstream to identify a more comprehensive list of critical items, expand the potential sources, and establish new supply chains and stockpiles,” said the White Paper.
While Singapore can never be entirely self-sufficient, the government will invest in more local production – of food and vaccines, for instance – to guard against future disruptions. The Republic will also enhance its capabilities in detecting disease outbreaks, such as wastewater surveillance.
Singapore cannot avoid crises or be fully prepared for one as complex and long-drawn as Covid-19, but it can strengthen its resilience by building buffers, said the paper: “Our best safeguard in any crisis remains having access to significant financial reserves and to critical supplies.“
A third lesson is to strengthen public health expertise and organisational capacity. The White Paper recommended a dedicated set-up to consolidate expertise in surveillance, disease prevention, preparedness and response, as well as epidemiological analytics and modelling.
Singapore will also grow its pandemic-related research capabilities so it can quickly establish the parameters of any new disease – including transmissibility and severity – and thus identify the right policy measures. Pandemic management should make better use of science and technology, including the sharing of data within the government.
Other lessons include being clear about whether to prioritise lives or livelihoods at each point, and improving partnerships across the public, people and private sectors; and maintaining clear and transparent public communication.
The government will review how it communicates crisis severity and public health measures to avoid causing undue public anxiety. The White Paper noted that the public announcement of the Dorscon (disease outbreak response system condition) level was meant to bolster vigilance, but sparked panic and led to a run on essential items.
The White Paper set out these lessons alongside a review of Singapore’s handling of Covid-19. There were eight areas where the country was judged to have done well, including the resilience of its healthcare system and its nationwide vaccination campaign.
There were six areas where the government could have done better, including the severe outbreak in migrant worker dormitories; contact tracing; and its U-turn on mask-wearing.
Border measures should have been tightened more aggressively at the beginning, but could then have been eased sooner for long-term pass holders once the local infection situation stabilised.
Safe management measures were overly calibrated and difficult to operationalise, confusing the public. Instead, Singapore should exercise greater flexibility with “broader brush but more implementable measures” and “guard against the instinct to aim for unrealistic standards of perfection”.
The final shortcoming was the transition to endemic Covid-19, with repeated tightening and easing of curbs, and a too-early switch to home recovery.
The White Paper draws on an internal review by former head of civil service Peter Ho and after-action reviews by government agencies.
Asked to grade Singapore’s performance over the past three years, Wong replied: “I can’t possibly give a grade because I was being examined, so it’s for people to examine me and give me a grade.”
The White Paper is accessible at go.gov.sg/covid-19-white-paper. It will be debated when Parliament sits on Mar 20.
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