September 06, 2022
“I think SARS in 2003 for us (Singapore) was the defining outbreak. It showed us how much we needed to do in order to prepare for the next pandemic. And we have managed to keep those lessons with us. We have been planning and training for the past few decades. And I think it’s quite fortunate that the COVID-19 pandemic, if it had to happen, happened when it did, when the people in the government’s and our ministries still remembered SARS, and still could apply some of the lessons that we learned very early.” – Dr. Hsu Li Yang, Vice Dean for Global Health and program leader of infectious diseases at the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.
