Speaking at a press conference, Wong Kan Seng, minister for home affairs and chairman of ministerial committee on SARS, said, "If everyone exercises social responsibility and plays his part in taking recommended precautions, we can go on with our daily life."

"To achieve this, we must all understand and play our role in the overall strategy against SARS," he added.

He defined Singapore's national strategy against SARS as "isolate, ring fence and contain strategy" and said the strategy's three prongs are to detect and isolate SARS cases as early as possible, to ring-fence detected or suspected cases and to adopt robust screening and infection control procedures, and to contain the spread of the virus and guard vigilantly against outbreak in the wider community.

Commenting on wide expectation for official help from the government, Wong said that the government will unveil relief measures on Thursday to help companies that are affected by the fallout from the SARS virus outbreak.

He said that actions at individual and national level are still not enough because SARS is a global problem.

"To fully contain it, international cooperation is essential- not just to government-to-government collaboration, but international cooperation at multiple levels," he stressed.

As of April 15, there has been a total of 162 SARS cases reported in Singapore with four new cases detected Tuesday. Of the total, 13 have died, 64 remain hospitalized and 85 have recovered from the disease and have been discharged from hospital.

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2003)