Former Head of Singapore’s Public Service, Peter Ho is to lead the Government’s After-Action Review (AAR) of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Co-Chair of the COVID-19 task force, Lawrence Wong told Parliament that Singapore’s response could be characterised in two broad phases.
“The AAR is focused on the first phase of Singapore’s experience with COVID-19, ranging from the start of the outbreak to August 2021, where the focus was on containing the spread of the virus,” Mr Wong said.
“Thereafter, when we had vaccinated a high proportion of people in Singapore, we shifted our approach to learning to live with the virus. For now, the pandemic is still not over, but the situation has improved.”
He said Mr Ho (pictured) had been given all the information regarding the Government’s pandemic response for him to exercise a thorough review.
“This is our intent: To learn thoroughly and rigorously from what we have experienced so far, in order that we can do better in the next pandemic, which will surely come,” Mr Wong said.
“This was also the approach we took and when we reviewed the lessons from SARS,” the Co-Chair said.
“We set up the National Centre for Infectious Diseases. Likewise, we will learn many lessons, many useful lessons from COVID-19, particularly the first phase of the experience so far.”
He said the lessons derived from the AAR would be wide-ranging, and would include “how we can be more resilient as a nation; how we can improve our supply chains; how we can improve our national resiliency in a broad range of areas”.
Singapore, 11 May 2022
