Professor Paul Tambyah, president of the Asia Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection, similarly said that the hospital outbreak is a “concern”, but said that quick measures have been put in place by the ministry and the hospital “so hopefully these will work”.
The key is to understand how these clusters occurred, he said, pointing to “detailed molecular fingerprinting” as critical to doing this.
“For the hospital cluster, the key has to be identifying the primary case and tracking where else this individual might have been in contact with others. This has implications for vaccine strategy and control efforts in general,” he said.
He added that quality control at the labs is also very important to ensure that there were no false positive serological results earlier on and also at the vaccination centres to make sure that the cold chain was preserved.
He said that the cases in vaccinated individuals are “a concern”. Some of the cases linked to the TTSH cluster have been vaccinated.
Nevertheless, he said that the current situation is “manageable” given a few factors.
“Firstly, the number are relatively small in the few clusters and most cases are linked. Secondly, we now have vaccines and thus we are much more able to contain outbreaks if we use strategies such as ring vaccination,” he said.
Ring vaccination involves vaccinating contacts of people who test positive, creating a "ring" around each infected person.
Such a strategy was used for smallpox in the past and mumps in recent years, Prof Tambyah said.
The key is to understand how these clusters occurred, he said, pointing to “detailed molecular fingerprinting” as critical to doing this.
“For the hospital cluster, the key has to be identifying the primary case and tracking where else this individual might have been in contact with others. This has implications for vaccine strategy and control efforts in general,” he said.
He added that quality control at the labs is also very important to ensure that there were no false positive serological results earlier on and also at the vaccination centres to make sure that the cold chain was preserved.
He said that the cases in vaccinated individuals are “a concern”. Some of the cases linked to the TTSH cluster have been vaccinated.
Nevertheless, he said that the current situation is “manageable” given a few factors.
“Firstly, the number are relatively small in the few clusters and most cases are linked. Secondly, we now have vaccines and thus we are much more able to contain outbreaks if we use strategies such as ring vaccination,” he said.
Ring vaccination involves vaccinating contacts of people who test positive, creating a "ring" around each infected person.
Such a strategy was used for smallpox in the past and mumps in recent years, Prof Tambyah said.
