Second-hand Smoke Complications Prevented My Family from Getting Vaccinated

 

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Recently, the government urges us to seek medical treatment immediately once we have developed any respiratory symptoms but as a long-term victim of second-hand smoke, my family and I are in a dilemma as these symptoms already seem “normal” to us. We have been constantly suffered from respiratory illnesses such as cough, sore throat, ear infection, and sinus caused by neighbours’ second-hand smoke. Sometimes we even experienced skin rashes and breathlessness when the symptoms became serious. My mum and I had missed our vaccination date due to poor health conditions and we are also worried that the vaccination might increase the severity of our respiratory symptoms.

The recent tightened measures force us back to work from home again and the second-hand smokes continue to haunt us. The report showed that even after vaccination we still can get infected so our strongest defence now is still our own immunity. We need strong lungs and immunity to fight against the evolving virus variants but our efforts are compromised by second-hand smoke.

The authorities said the source of transmission in Hougang HDB block cluster could be using the same lift but they overlooked second-hand smoke could be the culprit. If one infected smoker sneezed, coughed, or talked when smoking at the window, his second-hand smoke with infected droplets could pass the virus to his upstairs or downstairs neighbours. This explains why the infected Hougang households were from the same stack.

In other words, a potentially infectious Stay Home Notice (SHN) person didn’t roam around but his second-hand smoke still could roam freely in his neighbours’ house and cause damage to others’ health. Staying at home, after all, is no longer safe now.

We hope our government can relook into the harm of residential second-hand smoke and put a stop to it. During the last circuit breaker, Minister Amy Khor had proposed a three-pronged approach but until to date, nothing was implemented. If our new MOH minister wants to target the entire nation to achieve full vaccination at the end of the year and reduce escalating healthcare costs, stop the second-hand smoke harm now.