Asst Prof Hannah Clapham from the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at NUS opined that clarity on the outcomes that the governments are aiming for and the consequences of actions taken are crucial at a time like this.

A study by team of experts, mostly from the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, found that workplace distancing is far more effective in reducing the spread of the COVID-19 than school closures.

Prof C Raja Mohan, Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies at NUS opined that the war against the virus demands global solutions but the answers are likely to be national.

Assoc Prof Lawrence Loh, Director of the Centre for Governance, Institutions and Organisations at NUS Business School opined that Singapore’s Resilience Budget is almost analogous to American President Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal, which lasted from 1933 to 1939.

Dr Cecilia Tortajada, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Water Policy at NUS and Distinguished Visiting Prof Asit K Biswas from the University of Glasgow and Chairman of Water Management International Pte Ltd opined that as has been proven with the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, the actions of a few can impact the lives of many; and the simple task of proper and regular handwashing is what social responsibility means in practice.

Dr Adrian W J Kuah, Director of the Futures Office at NUS and Senior Research Fellow from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS and Dr Bernard F W Loo from NTU opined that the language of war when used in the context of fighting a pandemic would lead to frustrations because it implied a clear-cut definition of what victory or defeat looked like and an expectation that the post-war world would resemble the pre-war normalcy. They noted that one could use the language of war to mobilise society and its resources, but to not go overboard with it lest it became actual warmongering.

Scientists at Duke-NUS Medical School led by Prof Ooi Eng Eong, Deputy Director of the School’s Emerging Infectious Diseases programme have developed a way to track genetic changes that speeds testing of vaccines against COVID-19.

Prof Wang Linfa, Director of the Emerging Infectious Diseases Programme at Duke-NUS Medical School, shared at a panel discussion hosted by The Straits Times on 23 March 2020 that social distancing, personal hygiene, business continuity plans, could all help to reduce R0 (R-naught) to less than one. He stated that the strategy was to flatten the curve so that new cases would be reduced from a hundred or a thousand per day to just 10.

Prof Zheng Yongnian from the East Asian Institute at NUS noted that big countries have displayed the most tenacity in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic while they may not be as effective compared to smaller countries. He also highlighted that the government’s ability to minimise the fatality rate and damage to the society and economy, in a timely and effective manner, is the key mission of China’s governance reforms. 

Asst Prof Sam Yam Kai Chi from the Dept of Management and Organisation at NUS Business School shared that research has shown that humble leadership behaviour can indeed produce positive effects for teams and for firms as a whole, but this was far from universal.