Three national-level studies targeting different segments of Singapore’s population, namely healthcare workers, children and people at high risk of COVID-19 exposure, were launched today.
All three studies would be based on standardised tests of blood samples for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus which causes COVID-19.
These tests would be carried out at a single centralised laboratory at Duke-NUS. Such standardisation would allow for valid comparisons across various populations despite different sampling methods.
In addition to experts from Duke-NUS, the studies assembled medical researchers and clinicians from Singapore’s public health institutions, the Ministry of Health, DSO National Laboratories and A*STAR.
“At this critical juncture, it is important to know the extent of COVID-19’s exposure in the community, given potential asymptomatic infection and herd immunity,” said Professor Wang Linfa from the Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme at Duke-NUS and a member of the national COVID-19 Research Workgroup.
As the virus could spread around the community through asymptomatic and therefore unhospitalised individuals, these studies would provide insights into the extent to which such cases are underdiagnosed, and how they may contribute to the spread of COVID-19.
Data from these studies would let policymakers map how best to control the long-term spread of COVID-19, identify segments of the population at risk of infection, and who would benefit from a vaccine once one became available.
Singapore would be one of the first countries in the world to conduct such tests on a large scale.