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Singapore in talks with US after CDC description of Covid situation as ‘unknown’ baffles experts
- The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention urged Americans against travel to the city state, despite it having just a fraction of the cases reported in the US
- Singapore will require residents to get boosters to be considered fully-vaccinated but won’t close borders as it gears up to face an imminent wave of Omicron infections
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Singapore’s government is in talks with the US embassy after the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention described the city state’s Covid-19 situation as “unknown”, surprising experts who pointed out it had more frequent testing and tighter social distancing measures than the United States.
In reclassifying its advisory for the Southeast Asian country, the CDC urged Americans not to travel there at all, prompting disbelief among online commentators given the relatively few cases in Singapore. The US is reporting a weekly average of 485,363 cases, about twice the peak of last winter, but doctors say that there are likely to be more cases due to a shortage in Covid-19 test kits. Singapore reported just 1,404 cases in the past seven days.
This is not the first time the CDC has bewildered experts – last September it admitted it had made an error when it raised the Covid-risk level for Hong Kong from ‘low’ to ‘moderate’.
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Singapore’s Health Minister Ong Ye Kung told reporters on Wednesday that the CDC was unaware of Singapore’s surveillance test numbers, noting that some 150,000 polymerase chain reaction tests were administered every week.
Singapore also has waste water testing stations across the island, in housing estates, foreign worker dormitories and in nursing homes. “Just to be clear, we know our situation very well,” he added. The health ministry was providing American authorities with the “necessary data”, he said.
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