During yesterday's launch of the Schools Hand Hygiene Campaign, Chong Zheng Primary School students are taught the basics of proper hand-washing. -- ST PHOTO: BRYAN VAN DER BEEK
THE death toll will mount as the number of people infected with the new H1N1 swine flu virus increases.
And it is just a matter of time before the first case appears in Singapore, warned Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan on Thursday.
Unlike normal flu strains, from which many people have some immunity, the swine flu is totally new, so people have no protection against it. For some, the illness may be mild or moderate. For the unlucky, it could be severe or even fatal.
Repeating his advice on not being complacent, Mr Khaw said: 'You say well, it's not here. Mexico is thousands of miles away and so far the secondary transmission in other countries seems mild.'
Such an attitude is 'dangerous', he said. 'Yes, eventually, this particular H1N1 will end up just like any winter flu,' he said. 'But until then, it can do a lot of damage.'
It has already caused many deaths. Mr Khaw added that one theory now circulating among health experts is that many more people in Mexico have caught this new bug than reported.
If that is the case, then the transmission within the community could be high. If the virus is spread so easily, it could infect large numbers of people very quickly.
So even if the percentage of people with the swine flu who die remains small, when the number of people infected goes up, so will the number of deaths.
On why Singapore was still trying to contain the disease from spreading here, even though the World Health Organisation has said containment is no longer feasible, with the virus now in many places, Mr Khaw said that the strategy would not protect Singapore entirely, but might 'buy us time'.
It is difficult for an open country like Singapore to practise successful border control 'but we must try'. As long as the virus has not yet entered Singapore, he said, 'we must do our utmost to make the containment strategy work'.
