COVID-19, over 716 days later: Confronting Singapore’s long-term, pandemic-linked social challenges

So much ink has been spilled on Singapore’s healthcare and public health response to the ongoing pandemic. Yet, there will be an end to COVID-19, and the start of 2022 feels like a good time to shift some of the public focus to our country’s long-term, pandemic-linked social challenges. In this short episode, I summarise the most urgent and obvious problems - migrant, healthcare, and economically disadvantaged essential workers - before detailing four challenges which have received less attention: First, the harm to children, adolescents, and youths; second, compounded socio-economic inequality; third, social isolation; and fourth, ambiguous loss and unresolved grief.

A transcript is also available.

This episode is part of the podcast's fifth season (https://socialservice.sg/podcast/). The feature photo is by Ng Shi Wen.