Singapore - As excitement soars over the promise of Covid-19 vaccines, experts have warned that even the best vaccine will be no panacea on its own.
Prof Ooi was one of three experts who spoke at a Straits Times Covid-19 webinar on Thursday, looking at six months of the disease in Singapore, after the first case was reported on Jan 23. He said."Every time anyone has got some news, they know that this will affect their share price, their pre-sales, their funding ... and all of us grasp that information and get so excited about a vaccine."
"The way the vaccine works is it isn't just at the individual level. So the person who falls into the 70 per cent and is protected against infection, that's great, they won't get it. But actually they go on to protect the others who don't actually develop immunity, and that's this whole concept of herd immunity," he added.
But Prof Fisher said that having a vaccine does not spell the end of the Covid-19 pandemic:"Even after the vaccine comes, we're still going to have cases. We're still going to have little clusters. It'll just be a lot easier to manage with the vaccine."