S’pore continues to strengthen disease surveillance, share findings globally: Ong Ye Kung

SINGAPORE – Despite a global agreement on pandemic cooperation remaining elusive even after the devastating impact of Covid-19, Singapore will continue to strengthen its disease surveillance and support efforts to tackle future pandemics.

For instance, Singapore had detected that the JN.1 and KP.X Covid-19 strains were dominant during the past infection waves here, and shared useful information such as genetic sequences with other nations, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said on June 4.

In his Facebook post following the annual World Health Assembly (WHA) held in Geneva, Switzerland between May 27 and June 1, Mr Ong rued that the pandemic agreement spearheaded by the World Health Organisation fell through after two years of negotiations. He attributed this to an erosion of trust between developing and developed countries due to the disparity of vaccine availability during the pandemic.

The pandemic treaty sought a global agreement on how to best handle the next pandemic that public health officials say is sure to come, to avoid the missteps and disparities seen during the Covid-19 outbreak. But talks hit a dead end as some participating countries disagreed on a range of issues.

Still, Mr Ong welcomed the successful amendments to the International Health Regulations, a framework that guides nations in preventing, detecting and responding to the international spread of diseases including Ebola, H1N1 and Covid-19.

“A key change was stronger commitments to build core capacities for all states, and especially developing countries, to prevent, detect and respond to health emergencies,” he noted.

He said it meant “a lot” for Singapore, which as a transport node is quickly vulnerable to “any outbreak of a deadly, contagious and new pathogen”.

“Even if we have the best domestic disease response system, we still need to be part of a global effort because viruses do not respect borders,” he added.

“What a small country like us wants is clear and simple – we need multilateralism to work, and trust must be restored as the currency of the day,” Mr Ong said.

He added that when the trust level is weakened, it breaks the will and ability of people to work together, and other players and their destructive narratives will fill the void.

Mr Ong criticised how negotiations for the pandemic agreement were hindered by the pressure placed by lobby groups on governments around the world, such as from far-right nationalists.

“In Singapore, I am at the receiving end too. They pandered falsehoods claiming the agreement would force countries to forego their sovereignty, as the WHO could force vaccine mandates and lockdowns on countries. There is of course zero truth in such assertions.”

On the other hand, “Singapore tries to demonstrate our intent and advance our national interest through our actions”, Mr Ong said. 

Apart from strengthening its disease surveillance systems and sharing information with the world, Singapore is contributing to research and development for pandemic-related health products like vaccines.

As part of the network of collaborators of the 100-Day Mission, scientists here aim to develop an effective vaccine within 100 days of the outbreak of the next pandemic, and are working on many virus families.

“To be clear, this is not about having a Singapore-developed vaccine but having the best possible vaccine through a global scientific effort,” Mr Ong said.

To ensure greater vaccine equity between developed and developing countries, the facilities set up in Singapore by several vaccine and pharmaceutical suppliers will be producing for the region and the world.

Singapore is also part of a group of experts in the Regional Vaccine Manufacturing Collaborative, which is looking into ensuring sufficient production capacity in each region of the world.

On May 28, Mr Ong also announced that Singapore has pledged $24 million to support the WHO Investment Round from 2025 to 2028, as part of the Republic’s continued commitment to international cooperation in health, and multilateral coordination in tackling global health challenges.