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The Covid-19 pandemic has "severely" tested the government in multiple ways, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Apr. 12.

Speaking at the Administrative Service appointment and promotion ceremony, PM Lee added that the government must be prepared to make tough calls especially in the midst of uncertainty and ambiguity.

The past two years saw the government having to make many difficult and consequential choices, often without an established playbook or the luxury of a "wait and see" approach, he said.

PM Lee acknowledged the difficulties faced by the government when making certain calls during the pandemic:

"We had to judge what was best at that point with incomplete information, and act on that in the fog of war. Indecision, or waiting for all the facts to come in, would have been far worse. We did not get every call right."

However, the key lesson is to keep on learning and improving, and as more information is discovered, to be prepared to update, revise or even reverse decisions, he added.

Laying out the history of Singapore's Covid-19 policies and decisions

The prime minister highlighted that at the start of the pandemic, when little was known of Covid-19, the government had to make a judgement call: whether to let the outbreak burn through the population, and hope to reach safety through herd immunity, or to tighten up and keep cases as low as possible until the government learnt how to keep the population safe.

Letting the outbreak burn through carried a high risk of the virus spreading uncontrollably and causing many deaths, he elaborated, while aiming for a "zero Covid" strategy in a small city-state with no hinterland and inability to completely seal its borders, was both hard to do and incurred heavy economic and social costs.

The government thus decided, right from the onset of the pandemic, to not pay the "high price" in human lives, PM Lee said.

This resulted in the closure of borders, implementation of strict measures, and the imposition for a Circuit Breaker for a while.

In 2021, when the Delta variant arrived, the government had to judge how to pivot from this strategy, he said, as the strain's infectiousness was making "zero Covid" more and more untenable.

PM Lee laid out the issues facing the government as such:

"But how? While our national vaccination programme was progressing well, a sizeable portion of our population, especially the elderly, were still not yet protected from the virus. If we opened up too quickly, they would be at great risk.

We therefore decided to hold the line for a few more months until nearly everyone had been vaccinated. In the meantime, we grit our teeth and pressed hard to reach the remaining unvaccinated individuals, and prepared our systems to deal with high but hopefully not seriously ill case loads."

It was also necessary to change public mindsets as people had grown accustomed to the low daily case counts, and therefore needed their anxiety to be assuaged when cases began to rise after measures were eased.

"Fortunately, we executed the shift at just about the right time, and coped well with the subsequent Delta, followed by the Omicron surges," he said.

"Our health care system and workers came under considerable stress, but to their great credit they held up, and enabled us to transition towards living with Covid. This was the first lesson."

Covid-19 has also required the government to constantly think ahead

In addition, PM Lee said it is necessary for the government to plan beyond immediate problems, regardless of their urgency.

"At a time when we had a few dozen daily cases and were doing a few hundred PCR tests a day, we started thinking about what would happen when we had hundreds of cases and needed to do thousands of PCR tests daily," he pointed out.

"We scrambled to order test kits, stockpile medical equipment, and ramp up our healthcare capacity."

Once hospitals started seeing hundreds of Covid-19 cases, the next question was coping with thousands of cases, he added.

The government subsequently decided to simplify healthcare protocols and build up the systems, processes, and capacity to handle an outbreak on a much larger scale.

PM Lee added:

"These contingency plans and actions had to be made well in advance. If we had waited until cases actually surged before acting, it would have been much too late.

Realistically, we can’t prepare for every contingency, but we have to do the best we can. This is very hard, because we are usually already fully stretched dealing with the current fires. But being prepared and making investments early yields immense dividends, especially during a crisis."

Taking "calculated risks" on promising vaccine candidates

As for vaccines, the prime minister said that the government was cognisant of how this would be "a game-changer" and that there would already be a scramble even before they became available.

Advance commitments for vaccines were therefore secured, with the government taking "calculated risks" on promising vaccine candidates.

In adding that he was glad such decisions have turned out well for Singapore, PM Lee noted, "This cost us a tidy sum, and we accepted that not every bet would pay off. But we judged this a small price to pay to protect Singaporeans and accelerate our move to the new normal."

The government must therefore judge when it should count every dollar and get the best value for money, as well as when it is worthwhile to pay a bit more to buy insurance and options for the future, so as to be in a stronger position when the crisis worsens.

The Public Service must continue to work in maintaining public trust

Another instrumental factor in the government's handling of the crisis has been public trust, which PM Lee defined as trust that the government has the best interest of Singapore and Singaporeans at heart, and trust that the government is competent and will make the right decisions on behalf of Singaporeans.

"Singaporeans displayed that trust when they accepted the government’s advice and decisions, and they complied willingly with strict Safe Management Measures (SMMs), and when they came forward to get vaccinated," he said.

In emphasising that such trust is precious, PM Lee called for "first-class minds" with the proper ethos and values to work together with the political leadership.

Ministers must get policies right and ensure that they are well-designed, as well as provide public servants with the political support and cover that they require, he added.

As for public servants, they must show an appreciation of the political context, and ensure policies are properly implemented and executed.

As per PM Lee:

"The political leadership and public service must complement and support one another, and trust each other to play their respective roles, and this partnership is crucial.

As both our political leadership and public service leadership renew themselves, we must also renew the trust that exists between the current generation of ministers and senior public service officers, and extend it into subsequent generations."

He further cited Covid-19 as an example of how the whole 4G team of Ministers was involved "one way or the other", working with their permanent secretaries and management teams throughout the crisis, resulting in greater trust and understanding.

PM Lee concluded:

"This sets the foundation for the next generation of leaders – both the Ministers and the Public Service.

Because when their turn comes to assume the responsibility of leading the country, the two will need to continue to work just as closely, and deliver the same results that Singaporeans expect, and have become used to."

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Top photo via PM Lee Facebook