Spectre of COVID-19: Run from dorms to Singapore citizenry

PM Lee Hsien Loong delivering remarks on the coronavirus  situation in Singapore (PM’s Office)

By Ivan Lim
Former AJA President, Contributor to AsiaN 

SINGAPORE: An early favourite in the Covid-19 world wrestling challenge, Singapore began to falter midway in the match, leading to what some have characterised as a costly lesson of presumption.

Entering the ring, with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as the vigilant coach, was the fourth-generation (4G) team of Gan Kim Yong and Lawrence Wong (Health and National Ministers, respectively.

The ministerial taskforce was ready when the Coronavirus first made its sinister appearance in town on Jan 23, the carrier a tourist who had flown in from Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak.

In a head-on clash, Gan and Wong executed blocking moves to contain the Covid foe
with temperature screening of travellers from China, including isolation for those showing signs of flu.
They moved into attack mode when the first few locally transmitted cases appeared, and raised the disease response alert from yellow to orange.

The invisible enemy gave no quarter, unleashing more cases, this time as clusters.  The Singapore side responded by calling a time-out.

”Coach” Lee in his pep talk rallied his team and fellow Singaporeans. ”Situation is under control, no need to fear or panic.” There had been a rush to stock up on foodstuffs, thermometers, masks and toilet rolls.

Singapore had gone through the 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and considers itself well- equipped to deal with and defeat the new pandemic that experts say might last a year or longer.

But as an open city, the Republic was not ready to cut itself off from the rest of the world – an approach the World Health Organisation (WHO) praised. Adding a confident note, the PM even urged Singaporeans to “visit local attractions and try staycations” while remaining psychologically prepared for a prolonged battle

And true to the coach’s assessment of an uphill battle, a re-invigorated Gan-Wong team returned to face a fiercer Covid onslaught.

Imported cases and new Covid clusters began to rise unexpectedly even as aggressive contact tracing had identified and isolated potential victims.  In March, 14-day stay-home orders were also slapped on residents and work permit holders returning from China, and other Covid-infected nations like Japan, Iran, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom.

To cut chains of transmission, social and sports activities at community centres and schools were suspended. As the Covidians were seen as seeming to gain the upper hand, Coach Lee called for another time-out on April 7.

This time round, he sounded more unrelenting, as the number of double-digit cases continued. This, plus the appearance ofclusters in foreign worker dormitories, if not dumped down, could push us over the edge.

The team aimed to clamp a strangle hold on the foe – by means of a ‘circuit-breaker’ strategy. A partial lockdown would see “non-essential” public services, businesses and factories suspended for a month until May 4; schools and universities would conduct online lessons for students at home.

To cut the social links of transmission, “safe-distancing” rules required residents to stay at home, except for buying food and seeing their doctor.

As an added safeguard, the government distributed face masks, a pack of four, to every household. Previously, Mr Lee said, based on experts’ advice that surgical masks are meant for those who were sick. The ministerial taskforce had disregarded a statement issued by four senior medical practitioners urging people to wear masks as a precaution against non-symptomatic Covid carriers.

The “circuit breaker” move emboldened the 4G fighters. They quickly put a vice-like grip on Covid in a calculated move to wear it down. But they overlooked Covid still had a free arm to rain blows on them.

That was what followed. While cases involving Singaporeans and permanent residents declined, the infection rate among foreign workers crammed in dormitories spiked from April 9 onwards. Suddenly, the city-state of 5.7 million -foreign workers making up 1.5 million-, saw new daily Covid cases shooting up to a peak of 1,426 on April 20, raising the national tally to over 8,000.

Has Singapore’s grip on Covid loosened? Clearly, the 4G team had taken its eyes off the opponents at a critical point in the fight: their overall focus had been on doing a dunk-slam on the virus, missing the huge concentration of migrant workers in privately-run dormitories.

An ominous sign appeared on April 6 when there was a surge of 90 cases involving migrant workers. The taskforce declared two dormitories as isolation areas and 24,000 foreign workers were put on a 14-day quarantine.

The move indicated the taskforce had paid scant heed to the lesson from the cruise ship Diamond Princess with 3,710 passengers and crew on board. On Feb 11 ,a passenger who disembarked in Hong Kong was tested positive for Covid-19. The ship was then quarantined for 14 days in Yokohama, Japan. Within a month, 700 passengers were infected with the virus.

Alerting the authoritiesto the “cabin fever” danger, a non-government organisation, Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), issued a press statement on April 8.

“Confinement en mass in dormitories is a risky strategy,” TWC2 said. “The infection rate in the dormitories could increase dramatically.”

As more Covid clusters surfaced in more foreign workers’ dormitories, the taskforce acted swiftly to test workers for the virus in an attempt to isolate the sick from the rest. It also mobilised a multi-agency group to find new and more spacious accommodation to help ease congestion (12 to 20 people in a room was standard in some dormitories) and offer more hygienic living conditions for foreign workers aswell as meals.

However, owing to the huge numbers involved, WC2 argued that the government had to mount a bigger concerted operation to check the raging virus among the cooped-up migrant workers.

The Corvid curve on April 20 showed Singapore with a new high of 6,588 (compared to sister city Hong Kong at 1,026 and Taiwan at 398). Of these, 544 were foreign workers living in dormitories.

Apart from underestimating Covid’s potential eruption among the 400,000-strong foreign workers community, the 4G team’s slide from the top came amid its over-anxiety to clear the deck for holding the general election (GE). After all, Coach Lee had given the remit that the ruling People’s Action Party would be ready to go into hustings in the “hurricane” of the pandemic.

The 4G team showed that the GE figured in their anti-Covid campaign -a confident-looking taskforce co-chair Lawrence Wong said on March 12: “…Because it has to be held by April 2021, it is very likely it will be held when Covid-19 is still circulating in our midst. This is reality.”

A swift taming of the monster virus, particularly within the vote bank of local and elderly Singaporeans, would look good for the 4G team of young politicians being tested for the handling of a national crisis

The “reality” remark reflects the PAP’s sense of command, rooted in its record of winning every GE since 1968 that has given it the confidence of winning a quick victory over a monster. This is nothing short of a delusion, say critics.

Thereby hangs a cautionary tale. Yet true to form, the PAP leaders put on a brave face even as the Covid menace in the foreign workers community drove  daily infections, making up 1,050 out of the 1,111 new cases on April 21, pushing up the republic’s overall tally to 9,125, the highest to date in South-east Asia.

In a telecast to the nation on April 21, PM Lee sounded an optimistic note, “The results do show that the circuit breaker is working.” He was referring to the “levelling off” of new cases in the local community, at low 20s. However, cases of unknown source had not declined, pointing to a “larger hidden reservoir’ of cases.

Singapore now faces the spectre of the Novel Coronavirus escaping from the foreign dorms to the local community.

This has prompted the taskforce to conduct more extensive diagnostic tests for foreign workers and order those doing construction work to stay home.

The ‘circuit-breaker’ partial lockdown measures have also been extended from May 4 to June 1.

Noting that the anti-Covid campaign was proving tougher than expected, Mr Lee conceded:” We are making progress, but we have not yet succeeded.”