A very Happy National Day to all Singaporeans!

This year’s National Day theme is “Together, our Singapore Spirit”. It is an apt refrain during these challenging times. Apt because it is precisely during the uncertainties wrought by Covid-19 globally that we must tap deep into our reservoir of resilience, unity and fortitude to get through and emerge stronger.

Indeed, I remain confident that we will emerge stronger. Since the start of the pandemic, we have rallied together as a country. Robust public health measures have been put in place to contain the spread of the virus. In the face of a formidable and amorphous enemy, we have had to be nimble, adapting our strategy over time. With a combination of aggressive testing, contact tracing, quarantine and vaccination, we successfully contained successive waves of infections. I remain confident that this will be so during this current wave.

We are on track to get the majority of the population fully vaccinated by September. 77 per cent of the population have had at least one dose of the vaccination. 64 per cent are now fully vaccinated. With higher vaccination rates, we will, hopefully, be able to ease restrictions soon. But we must do so in a calibrated and considered way while reviewing the global situation.

Hong Kong, too, is poised to recover strongly after some challenging times. Within a few weeks of first arriving in the city, I can already feel the dynamism and buzz of this great metropolis. The late Lee Kuan Yew, who used to visit Hong Kong regularly, had long admired Hong Kong for its self-reliance, resilience and dynamism, and urged Singapore to strive and learn from Hong Kong and its “Lion Rock spirit”. The Hong Kong team’s exceptional performance in the Tokyo Olympics bears testimony to the Hong Kong people’s resilience and determination in the face of great odds.