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Opinion | China’s ‘zero Covid’ vs Singapore’s ‘living with it’: rapid low-cost testing could mean we don’t need to choose
- Eliminating the virus completely, through stringent lockdown and quarantine measures, and treating it as endemic are often discussed as mutually exclusive strategies
- Frequent and widespread adoption of at-home antigen rapid testing could offer the best of both worlds
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Singapore’s vaccination rate is one of the highest in the world, above 80 per cent. Encouraged by this, the city state has tried to reopen and renormalise. However, the recent rise in Covid-19 cases has grown faster than expected, hospitals began feeling the impact, restrictions have been reintroduced, and mobility remains well below pre-pandemic levels.
Here and elsewhere, there is a vigorous debate between two groups on how to “exit” from the pandemic.
On one side are the “eliminationists”. They point to China which advocates that the safest way to defend against Covid-19 is to eliminate it. Lockdowns and quarantine, they argue, are a price worth paying to keep everyone safe.
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They highlight that eliminationist economies have, overall, grown faster than mitigation economies. Eliminationists note the potential threat of novel variants and that long Covid is incompletely understood.
On the other side are those advocating for reopening society. They argue that, since vaccines protect the vast majority from severe disease, allowing the Delta variant to spread is acceptable and even desirable for post-infection immunity.
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The reopeners point to well-vaccinated countries in Europe that lifted regulations without major spikes in deaths. Reopeners say that ongoing travel and social restrictions will do needless damage to society, mental health and the economy.
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