As governments in Asia attempt to reassure their populations concerning the coronavirus, public health experts say Singapore’s approach to communicating with the general public provides a model for others to scale back panic, rumors and conspiracy theories.
In a nine-minute recorded message on Sunday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said “fear can do more harm than the virus itself” after reports of long lines and stockpiling at local supermarkets.
He then outlined steps residents can take to forestall the spread of the virus, equivalent to practicing good hygiene, while ensuring town has sufficient supplies of products.
He further assured Singaporeans that the virus doesn’t seem like as deadly as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003, meaning most persons are prone to experience mild illness.
He also said the federal government would change its approach if the virus spreads to avoid overwhelming hospitals, adding that he would keep them “informed every step of the best way.”
Speech, sent on social media in three languages, looked as if it would have a right away impact: long queues in supermarkets across town on Friday evening returned to normal levels on Sunday.
That alone proved noteworthy in a region where governments have struggled to get the message right, prompting panic buying and confusion over the way to protect against the outbreak.
Singapore, with a population of 5.7 million, has 45 confirmed cases of the virus. That’s the second-highest tally outside China, excluding the cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan.
Lee’s speech “was a reasonably unique example of superb risk communication,” he said Claire HookerSenior Lecturer on the Center for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine, University of Sydney, who has studied society’s responses to epidemics and infectious diseases for about 20 years.
“This resulted in very specific actions” that “restored some control to people whose sense of control would be threatened,” she said.
Thomas Abraham, writer of the book “The Plague of the twenty first Century, the Story of SARS” and a risk communication consultant in the corporate World Health ORganisationsaid the speech was effective due to Singaporeans’ high level of trust in the federal government’s competence, in addition to due to its transparency.
“Prime Minister Lee is not hiding any facts,” Abraham said. “He also doesn’t hesitate to talk about how things could get worse.”
Source : Bloomberg
