This is the fourth in a series of webcast events by the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI) entitled “Coronavirus, Asia, and the World.” Throughout the coming weeks, ASPI will be presenting web-only programs every Tuesday and Thursday to analyze the scope of the ramifications from the novel coronavirus across the Asia-Pacific region and the world. All events will be live-streamed on YouTube and Facebook. For information about future events in this series and for ASPI’s additional coronavirus content see here.

As confirmed cases of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus continue to rise across much of the West, governments and public health officials are looking to nations across the Asia-Pacific for best practices and lessons learned in “bending the curve” of this global outbreak. While the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Singapore more than 2 months ago, the city-state’s quick strategy to test its citizens (and increase laboratory capacity to do so), aggressively trace contacts of carriers, and provide clear communication and guidance on social distancing allowed it to significantly slow COVID’s spread. In one of the world’s busiest hubs for travel and trade, what are the lessons that can be gleaned from its experience with COVID-19, as well as SARS nearly two decades before?

Join this special Asia Society Policy Institute webcast featuring Professor Yik-Ying Teo, Dean of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore, in conversation with ASPI President Kevin Rudd.

Speakers

Professor Yik-Ying Teo, or commonly known as YY, is the second Dean of the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore. Trained as a mathematician at Imperial College and completed his MSc and DPhil at Oxford in statistical genetics, YY returned to Singapore in 2010 after working for four years as a Lecturer in Oxford and concurrently a researcher at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics. Prior to his Deanship, he was the Founding Director for the Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, and also the Director for the Center for Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Research. He is presently a member on the Council of Scientists for the International Human Frontier Science Program, as well as a member governing board member of the Regional Centre for Tropical Medicine and Public Health Network for Southeast Asia.

The Hon. Kevin Rudd is inaugural President of the Asia Society Policy Institute. He served as 26th Prime Minister of Australia (2007 to 2010, 2013) and as Foreign Minister (2010 to 2012). He is Chair of the Board of the International Peace Institute in New York, and Chair of Sanitation and Water for All, a global partnership of government and non-government organizations dedicated to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6. He is a Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House and the Paulson Institute, and a Distinguished Statesman with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also a member of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization’s Group of Eminent Persons.