Any anti-vax trend may cause breakouts of preventable diseases, become very serious: Ong Ye Kung

SINGAPORE – If the anti-vaccination movement had taken root in Singapore during the Covid-19 pandemic, the country’s death rates would have been much higher, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung.

“The only reason why Singapore had one of the lowest excess deaths during the few years of Covid-19 was that the great majority of Singaporeans, especially seniors, took the vaccine and then with that, we could open up Singapore,” he said. 

Excess deaths

 refers to higher rates of death than would normally be the case, and this has emerged as a leading measure of the overall impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Speaking on The Straits Times’ current affairs podcast The Usual Place on March 24, Mr Ong said Singapore’s excess death rate during the Covid-19 years between Jan 1, 2020, and Dec 31, 2022, was “about 980 or so” per million people. This compares with 3,000 in the US and 2,000 in Britain and most parts of Europe, where there was much more reluctance to take the vaccines.

The data was drawn from Our World in Data, a collaborative effort between researchers at the University of Oxford and Global Change Data Lab, a non-profit organisation.

“In Singapore, I think so far it’s quite contained,” Mr Ong said.

He added that in the case of vaccinating against Covid-19, there was data on how it would benefit people and what the risks were.

“I think Singaporeans are very wise and informed in that sense. There was a minority of anti-vaxxers in Singapore and so long as the numbers are not big, those who are prepared to take the vaccine will basically protect them,” he said.

“But if their numbers grow, then it is difficult to protect them when you do not have enough critical mass of people who take the vaccine to protect those who refuse to.”

Pointing to how potentially very serious not getting vaccinated can be, Mr Ong cited the resurgence of measles in various parts of the world. Measles is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus that can lead to severe complications and death.

This, he said, is happening in certain communities in the US where the vaccination rate is low. Measles has also made a comeback in Thailand, Vietnam and other parts of South-east Asia, where vaccines were not available.

In Singapore, as part of the National Childhood Immunisation Schedule, all children should receive two doses, at least four weeks apart, of the MMR vaccines to prevent measles, mumps and rubella from the age of 12 months.

Immunisation against measles is compulsory by law and this vaccination is required for enrolment into schools.

“The moment anti-vax beliefs seep into society and people do not want to take the measles vaccine, I think you will see a comeback of measles,” Mr Ong warned.

He said every drug and every vaccine has side effects, and the question is how serious and how frequent these side effects are, compared with getting a disease and suffering from it.

“In all health jurisdictions in the world, we have to balance that and recommend what should the population take,” Mr Ong said.

“(The anti-vaxxers) have a totally different narrative. Sometimes it is not just about risks. It is also about a belief that we have natural immunity and that we should not be taking something that is man-made and artificial.

“From a scientific point of view, from a public healthcare point of view, and from a personal well-being point of view, this is actually the wrong teaching.”

When it came to Covid-19, he noted, “we were all very clear in our minds that by taking the vaccine, we achieved some resilience”.

Mr Ong admitted that it was a time of great anxiety, and coming up with regulations to prevent the disease’s spread was not only gruelling but also complicated.

“So many people wrote to me at that time to say, ‘Minister, I am prepared to do my part, but as of now, I am more afraid of your rules than I am afraid of Covid-19 because my life cannot function.’ That was very humbling, and I think they were right,” he said.

Citing how the Delta and Omicron variants were highly contagious, Mr Ong said that when the spread could not be contained, the rules became complicated.

He said different methods were used to track people’s movements or their proximity to one another, and to issue quarantine orders, making the rules complex.

That was when the team at the Ministry of Health came up with Protocols 1-2-3, a simple set of rules to determine what individuals should do if they were unwell or tested positive for Covid-19, and which proved to be a game changer, he said.

“I told my staff that we needed to press the reset button and change all the rules. Singaporeans were prepared to do their part and be responsible, but our rules were preventing them from being socially responsible by imposing all kinds of restrictions and quarantine rules, so let’s redo everything,” he explained.

“I discussed it with my co-chairs (at the Covid-19 multi-ministry task force), who supported it, and then we rolled it out. I think that was a pivotal moment because that was the moment we told Singaporeans we trusted them to do the right thing,” Mr Ong said.

He added that the “lesson” here was “to always make policies that cater to the majority who are prepared to take the responsibility”.

“Never come up with a policy that always tries to catch the minority. Then I think you would miss the point. That was one lesson I learnt,” Mr Ong said.