Singapore’s Covid-19 multi-ministry task force last week, on June, 18 announced that they would from now on treat the Corona virus as influenza.
It declared that infected people may recover at home and for large gatherings, travel and businesses functions to resume as normal. It was decided to do away with quarantine and isolation of close contacts and not to make public the daily number Covid-19 of patients.
Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong, and Health Minister Ong Ye Kung shared the outlines of the new normal in an article published by The Straits Times which read as follows: “It has been 18 months since the pandemic started, and our people are battle-weary. All are asking: When and how will the pandemic end?” the three government ministers wrote in the editorial titled ‘Living Normally, with Covid-19’.
They concluded what everyone is nervously guessing the world-over. That this illness which constantly reminds persons of safeguarding their immunity; just like in the case of a common flu, but to a more enhanced degree, may never go away, at least not in the near future.
As for the decision taken by Singapore businesses will have hope that their operations will not be disrupted.
This small country whose not so long ago rags to riches history makes it stand apart as a nation where leadership, commitment and vision is put to task, showed how determined it is to not allow this pandemic to ruin its hard won economic success.
The combination of the vital government ministries in this context; trade and industry, finance and health worked in unison to ensure a common decision to be put to the test for the good of the people.
The Covid-19 conclusion of Singapore is what many countries have already toyed with but never had the courage to be as bold as this, although Sweden does come close in never having an official lockdown and thus avoiding unnecessarily energising the fear factor which greatly induces the breakdown of immunity.
It is clear that Singapore, having done the impossible beginning six decades ago; transforming a small nation with limited natural resources into a global transshipment hub and manifesting a near miraculous transformation of a slum like condition into a first world country, has shown mettle once again in using its own mind.
When much of the world is copying Covid-19 solutions from others, unable to make clear independent decisions, Singapore, it is interesting to note has come to the very same conclusion our traditional physicians arrived at.
Sri Lanka’s traditional physicians of Sinhala wedakam fame some fourteen months ago, after keenly studying the information of the Covid-19 virus emanating from the world, and researching into the diverse Lankan herbal curative options for eliminating the earliest symptoms of the virus from the lungs, declared that it can be treated as a flu.
The earliest recovery with high intense traditional food and medicine was cited as short a time span of three days. This was proven by the traditional physicians who provided their medications for persons in quarantine, prisons and those having serious symptoms who asked for such medications.
Many Lankan traditional physicians took to social media as early as March last year with immunity boosting precautions.
These physicians advised the nation on avoiding canned food, gluten infused bread/fast food and recommended consuming a stringent diet of traditional foods such as lunukenda and thambunghodi.
Some traditional physicians took to social media to explain how vapor inhalation, Sri Lanka’s perennial exterminator of lung infections could be carried out with a range of herb infusions.
This is in utilising the earliest available global information that high levels of heat destroys the Covid virus. (China used this simple trick to become the only country to control the virus by last May and by June last year was having some economic festival of sorts to showcase their rise from the challenge).
Of course Singapore is likely to now put to full use the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and food traditions associated with it as it now strives to boost the immunity of its people to the highest possible level.
Singapore is not likely to have made this announcement on Covid-19 merely as a grandiose show of bravery, and is bound to leave no stone unturned to make it work.
This same conclusion of getting people to treat Covid-19 prudently as a more advanced cousin of the flu was recommended by several top scientists and medical practitioners in several European countries last year.
Notably Sweden was the most radical of them all which studiously avoided a lockdown and greatly reduced the number of patients, refusing to listen to the global advice
Singapore’s decision is a beacon to a world going insane by shutting down entire factories because one patient is discovered with the virus and hauling off bewildered healthy persons to quarantine and forcing the ‘patient’ label on asymptomatic persons with stellar immunity.
The purpose of this writer highlighting the decision of Singapore is to primarily herald the analysis of our traditional physicians (wedamahattayas) who by April last year declared that this disease could be easily treated by them as a ‘semprathishyawa.’
Having spent every week of the past year writing on why the Wedakama/Sri Lankan Ayurveda/Siddha/Unani; the miracle makers of immunity should be giving us on a platter the solution for Covid-19 that the desperate Western world do not have, the Singapore decision should at least now get us thinking.
It should teach us to honour our past heritage and not to think of our traditional physicians as non scientific ignoramuses.
“The bad news is that Covid-19 may never go away. The good news is that it is possible to live normally with it in our midst,” Singapore’s Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong, and Health Minister Ong Ye Kung explained in The Strait Times.
The ministers said many are infected by the flu every year, but that the chances of falling very ill are so low that people live with it and carry on with their daily activities while taking simple precautions.
A “similar outcome for Covid-19”, can be created by Singapore, the ministers had stated.
Here we can take some time to analyse and appreciate the synchronisation of national issues within and between government ministries and how focused decisions are made.
Sri Lanka has three ministries that are overall responsible for handling the Covid-19 pandemic; the Ministry of health, the Ministry of Indigenous Medicine Promotion and a specially appointed State Minister of Covid-19 Control.
It is to be assumed that possibly with the development in Singapore that the three ministers of these subject areas will take a cue and discuss in detail and in unity what Sri Lanka could do to charter its own course to handle this pandemic.
Of course Sri Lanka may not have to worry as much as Singapore about keeping its people healthy as it is us that have our thunapaha and our food and multifarious traditional infusions that create so much immunity.
Even at this late stage if a practical solution is found suited to this country, we could still save ourselves from the depressive near suicidal economic calamity we now find ourselves in as a nation.
Probably what needs to be kept in mind is that solutions for challenges don’t fall from the sky and that it is the people who create them.
The need of the hour is to enable Lankans to become strong, supporting them to eat well and correctly, immunity boosting traditional foods.