Episode 35: Dr Paul Tambyah: Travel must work with medicine to prevent being taken hostage in next pandemic

Singapore-based infectious disease expert Dr Paul Tambyah said that unless the industry works with the medical fraternity to come up with a scientific, calibrated approach to give confidence to governments, that will become the default mode, given the success seen in countries like New Zealand and Australia that implemented sharp lockdowns over isolated cases.

In Episode 35 of the WiT Podcast, National University of Singapore professor, Dr Tambyah, who is president-elect of the International Society of Infectious Diseases (ISID), covers a wide range of topics including the possibility that WHO may declare the end to the pandemic by or towards the end of the third quarter given the rapid acceleration of vaccine rollouts, but a recurring theme was how travel and medicine needed to work closer together to prevent a Covid-like devastation of the travel industry from happening again.