March 23, 2020, 05:00 AM
On March 20, 2020, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was interviewed via Skype by Greg Sheridan from The Australian, the national broadsheet Down Under.
The interview was conducted remotely on Friday, March 20, as both sides refrained from meeting physically -- a familiar way of communicating during this Covid-19 outbreak given how plenty of office workers have already taken to telecommuting.
Among the topics talked about was the virus and its fallout, the singular major talking point that heads of states cannot escape from addressing.
The transcript of the interview was released to the media over the weekend.
Singapore not out of the woods despite dealing with Covid-19 convincingly
PM Lee responded with caution when Sheridan highlighted Singapore's highly-lauded approach to containing Covid-19.
The Australian interviewer mentioned that The Economist had declared Singapore to be the most successful country in dealing with the coronavirus.
PM Lee said: "Well, we are flattered, but we are actually very deeply concerned for ourselves, as well as for the wider world we live in. It is a very difficult virus to eradicate."
"It is one which is dangerous enough to cause considerable human suffering and death, and even greater anxiety and fear."
Whole-of-government response
In the face of such a potential killer, PM Lee also explained that dealing with the viral outbreak early on before it took off required the Singapore authorities to get its "ministries to come together so that we could respond to this on a whole-of-government level".
"Because it is not just a matter of the doctors and the hospitals and treating the sick people, but also the social measures and the public reassurance and communications, as well as the national preparations for stockpiling," PM Lee explained, as he said supplies and trade still had to flow, while borders between countries had to remain safe.
Using an analogy to describe how Singapore is still in the thick of handling the crisis, PM Lee said: "If I made an analogy – it is not that the tide has turned, it is that we put the dykes up."
PM Lee said the danger was to take our eyes off the issue, and an outbreak can happen, "like what happened in South Korea".
Singapore has hindered virus' spread, not eradicate it
Reiterating what he said about Singapore's cautious approach, PM Lee emphasised that the country has hindered the spread of Covid-19, but had not successfully prevented it.
He said: "I would not say we have successfully prevented. I think I would say so far we have reasonably successfully hindered the transmission."
This was done by undertaking certain measures, such as getting people to turn themselves in for check-ups if they are unwell, taking the labour-intensive work of contact tracing seriously, and motivating people and businesses to adopt other arrangements of going about their jobs.
Virus will be around for "quite some time"
Asked about how long he expects the virus to be around, PM Lee said: "I am not a specialist; I can only go by what I read and reasonable inferences from that."
"I think this is going to be with us for quite some time," he added.
PM Lee also elaborated on the dilemma that countries that have dealt with the virus are now facing, highlighting China's current status.
"You look at China. By dint of Herculean effort, they locked down drastically many of their cities, and brought their domestic cases to zero. But they are at risk now from imported cases from all over the world," he said.
"So what do they do? Do they shut themselves off from the world, or do they carefully open up, knowing that this is going to let the virus back in?"
These are PM Lee's comments on this particular topic:
How long will Covid-19 lasts?
The Australian: Prime Minister, everyone is asking this question all around the world. How long do you think this lasts for? Is there any sense at all that we can predict when we might come out of this crisis?
PM: I am not a specialist; I can only go by what I read and reasonable inferences from that. But looking at the behaviour of the disease and the way it is jumping from country to country, you can push it down within a country, but it has not disappeared worldwide, so I think this is going to be with us for quite some time.
You look at China. By dint of Herculean effort, they locked down drastically many of their cities, and brought their domestic cases to zero. But they are at risk now from imported cases from all over the world. So what do they do? Do they shut themselves off from the world, or do they carefully open up, knowing that this is going to let the virus back in?
Their population is not immune to it yet, in very large numbers. Because even if a million Chinese have got the virus so far, that still leaves almost 1.4 billion who have not yet, and are still, in immunological terms, naive and at risk. So, what you can hope for is that you control the spread of the disease, you hold the position, and hope and pray that the scientists come up with either a treatment or a vaccine within a year or two. And in time for us to exit this without the doomsday scenario, namely that the disease goes through the whole population, and then eventually we have herd immunity. Either it is going to leave you with huge casualties or it is going to take forever, and to lock down forever. I think it is an enormous economic cost and human cost too.
You can read the full transcript here:
Top photo by Ministry of Communications and Information
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