Singapore has been taking drastic measures to combat coronavirus ever since the breakdown started. Reportedly, the country currently ranks the fifth as the country with the most coronavirus cases outside China. Previously, it belonged to top three.
In the recent updates pertaining to their attempts to combat the COVID-19, Singaporean officials are taking a one-month pay cut. Led by PM Lee Hsien Loong and President Halimah Yacob, the movement is to provide bonus for health workers fighting against the disease.
PM Lee stated that this is political figures’ way to show solidarity for those fighting the coronavirus outbreak. He added that he is happy because even the president is willing to participate in the gesture.
Regarding the collected money, healthcare officers in restructured hospitals and the Ministry of Health (MOH) and some officers in other frontline agencies will be the recipients. The bonus lasts up to one month.
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Singapore Begins to Use Antibody Test to Track Coronavirus
While researchers around the globe are competing to develop antibody tests, Singapore appears to be the first to use it to track down coronavirus infections. The antibody tests, also known as serological tests, will help determine whether the target virus exists or not in the carrier.
The developer is an emerging disease specialist at Duke-NUS, Linfa Wang. She discovered antibodies targeting the spike protein that are able to prevent viruses from killing cells. After taking blood samples from recovered patients, they created synthetic viral proteins capable of detecting the antibodies without having to inject the live virus.
The novel test will replace the preceding test which was only able to detect if the virus was still present. The new test, furthermore, will help detect the virus according to population by using trackers.
So far, the use of antibody tests to detect coronavirus infections is still an experiment. Serological assays need to assess its reliability and validity before mass-producing the tests.
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