Ann Acad Med Singap
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Ann Acad Med Singap · Aug 2020
ReviewCOVID-19 and Singapore: From Early Response to Circuit Breaker.
Singapore, an island country with 5.6 million population and a large volume of tourists from mainland China, was one of the first countries to report imported COVID-19 cases and had the highest number of cases outside mainland China for a time in February 2020. The government responded with a series of broadscale public health measures and managed to contain this first wave of infection. ⋯ This case study narrates the developments, influencing factors, and outcomes related to events starting from Singapore's first response to COVID-19 and up to the point of its entry into Circuit Breaker. It serves as a reference for the understanding and analysis of developments in an evolving pandemic and a nation's response from a systems level perspective.
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Ann Acad Med Singap · Aug 2020
Comparative StudyComparative Analysis of Symptomatic and Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Children.
In this study, a comparison of clinical, epidemiological and laboratory parameters between symptomatic and asymptomatic children with SARS-CoV-2 infection was performed. ⋯ The high proportion of asymptomatic infected children coupled with household transmission as the main source of paediatric COVID-19 infection underscores the importance of early screening and isolation of children upon detection of an index case of COVID-19 in a household. Symptomatic children were more likely to have abnormal laboratory parameters but they did not have a poorer outcome compared to asymptomatic cases.
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Ann Acad Med Singap · Aug 2020
Lessons from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2003 Pandemic as Evidence to Advocate for Stroke Public Education During the Current Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic.
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak is affecting hospital admissions of stroke patients. This, in turn, will reduce the use of proven stroke treatments, which will result in poorer stroke outcomes. We examined local stroke admissions before, during, and after the 2003 outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) (these periods being defined in both the Singapore and worldwide contexts), to extrapolate stroke admission patterns in Singapore during the current COVID-19 crisis. ⋯ During the SARS pandemic, there was a reduction in the number of stroke admissions, and this was apparent during both the local SARS and worldwide SARS outbreak periods. We should take appropriate steps through public education to minimise the expected reduced stroke admissions during the COVID-19 pandemic, inferred from the findings during the SARS pandemic.