COVID-19 in Singapore: Our Experience as a Country, and at Singapore General Hospital's Department of Emergency Medicine

COVID-19 has changed our lives as we knew it. The world is not naive to infectious disease outbreaks, having experienced pandemics such as the H1N1 outbreak in 2009 with up to 400,000 deaths, and the ＂Spanish flu＂ in 1919 with up to 50 million deaths worldwide respectively (https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/communicable-diseases/influenza/pandemic-influenza/past-pandemics). However, this outbreak caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 has taken the world by storm since it was first reported in end 2019. With the numbers of confirmed cases of COVID-19 and death toll rising every day, it raises the question of when will we be fully equipped to handle a pandemic of such a mammoth scale. A multi-pronged approach has to be undertaken by not only healthcare organisations and pharmaceuticals, but also government agencies and legislation in order to overcome the repercussions and mitigate the effects of an infectious disease outbreak. In this article, we share our experience in Singapore and Singapore General Hospital against COVID-19 and our ongoing efforts to keep the virus at bay.