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Singapore launches national R&D plan to respond to future pandemics after Covid-19


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SINGAPORE – A dedicated research programme launched on Thursday will allow Singapore to pull together pandemic experts to respond to future infectious disease outbreak threats.

The Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness and Response, or Prepare, will link up experts from various disciplines as well as government agencies to tackle such threats.

It will also reach beyond the nation’s shores to strengthen research partnerships, share information and knowledge, and collaborate with institutes internationally.

 

Health Minister Ong Ye Kung, who launched Prepare, said that adaptability has been a hallmark of Singapore’s response to Covid-19, with scientific evidence and data guiding decisions every step of the way.

With the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic, Singapore will further enhance its preparedness against future infectious disease outbreaks, he said, and Prepare will be one of the key initiatives.

The minister said the fight against Covid-19 required a multidisciplinary effort.

 

Highlighting the major roles played, Mr Ong said Professor Wang Linfa from Duke-NUS Medical School and his team were able to isolate the virus within days of the first local confirmed Covid-19 case. This laid the foundation for future research. These studies provided important insights to help the Ministry of Health (MOH) formulate and adjust policies throughout the pandemic, he said.

 

Three weeks after the viral sequence was published, a research and clinical team here were among the first to produce and deploy diagnostic kits.

Prof Wang, together the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID); the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star); and GenScript, a global biotech company, developed a “first-in-the-world” serology test to detect neutralising antibodies without the need of a high-level Biosafety Level-3 facility.

An A*Star team modelling of the trajectory of the virus helped the Government understand how it could spread and led to the development of safe management measures.

Associate Professor Barnaby Young and Professor Lisa Ng led a study by NCID and A*Star that showed the viral load dropped to relatively low levels a few days after the onset of symptoms.

 

This finding was critical, said Mr Ong. “It enabled us to move away from the practice of discharging Covid-19 patients upon a negative test result, which can take many days or weeks, to a policy of discharging a patient after a maximum of seven days.”

Associate Professor Alex Cook, an expert in infectious disease modelling from the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, worked very closely with MOH throughout the pandemic to provide projections of the Covid-19 disease trajectory, “which turned out to be quite close to actual observed rates”.

Professor David Lye from NCID actively engaged the United States’ National Institutes of Health to include Singapore as a global Covid-19 clinical trials site. This enabled the Republic to have early access to therapeutic drugs such as remdesivir.

Such experts can continue to work together under the banner of Prepare, which is headed by Prof Wang.

Their immediate task is to work closely with MOH to develop a national epidemic research and development plan.

 

 

 

 

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