Singapore jolted into action in wake of Covid-19 spurt

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (Twitter)

By Ivan Lim
Former AJA President, Contributor to AsiaN

SINGAPORE: Days after being rated the safest place to be during the COvid-19 pandemic, Singapore has been hit by a sudden jump in new community cases, jolting the authorities to impose new restrictions on citizens’ gatherings and travels of foreigners to the Republic.

Only last week the city-state was lauded in the latest Bloomberg Covid-19 Resilience Ranking as tops in tackling the Coronavirus with local infection cases down to single digits plus and a strict regime of tests, contact tracing and quarantine for entry of foreigners.

A fifth of the 5.7 million residents have also been vaccinated, outdoing New Zealand, Taiwan and Australia. Singaporeans have largely resumed a post-Covid normal of work, leisure and religious activities.

Then the rosy picture became clouded as community cases in the past week went up to 37 from 10 cases, and a cluster of 13 cases was detected in the public Tan Tock Seng Hospital, involving eight patients and five staff members – two doctors, a nurse, a health-care assistant and a cleaner. Four wards have since been placed under lockdown while 4,500 staff members and 1,100 in-patients have been tested for the virus.

The hospital cluster has grown to 27 cases; and an-88-year-old woman patient died on Sunday.

At the same time, unlinked Covid-19 cases in the community have also risen to 10 from 4 in the past week. They included an Immigration & Checkpoints Authority officer at Changi Airport Terminal 1, a15-year-old student at the Edgefield Secondary School in Punggol.

Earlier, a 20-year-old student at the Yale-National University of Singapore College had tested positive for the virus and was isolated.

Among the new measures in force from May 1 are limiting social gatherings by citizens to two a day; and household visits to be capped at eight visitors a day. The rulings are on top of mandatory wearing of face-masks, social distancing, and restrictions for visiting malls, restaurants, places of worship, as well as suspension of outdoor activities such as qigong exercise, lion dancing and barbeques and beach parties.

In a “don’t let your guard down” warning, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told a May Day rally: “We are watching our own situation, and it can easily, quickly, turn bad again. If we have to do another lockdown like last year’s circuit breaker, it would be a major setback for our people and for our economic recovery. Let’s not make it happen.”

The runaway surge in Covid-19 transmissions in India has raised concerns about the spread of a more virulent or variant mutant virus to the region. Medical experts have warned that vaccinations are not 100 per cent full-proof against the virus.

The Ministry of Health and its panel of expert advisers are carrying out tests to determine the cause of the latest virus infection and re-infection of those who had recovered from the disease.

In the face of a devastating ‘second wave’ transmission in India of over 390,000 new cases yesterday – said to be spearheaded by a double-mutant of the Covid-19, – Singapore acted to curb entry of non-permanent residents from India but short of a ban imposed by Hong Kong and New Zealand.

Instead, the arrivals from India have to serve an additional 7-day isolation at home after the 14-day serving of Stay-Home Notices (SHN) at hotels and other dedicated places.

Singapore has taken a calibrated approach based on expert medical advice and other policy considerations.

Professor Teo Yik Ying, dean of the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health has been quoted, in what amounted to countering persistent calls by netizens to urgently ban flights from India, as saying: “If such flight bans were successful, we would see a much smaller Covid-19 footprint globally, given the number of flight bans and border closures in the early months of 2020.”

“What I suspect … is that these new variants that have emerged in one country are in fact already circulating in other countries.”

Infectious diseases specialist Dr Leong Hoe Nam highlighted the threat a second viral wave posed to Singaporeans to “be aware the virus is a predator… seeking out the weakest link. Any lapse could be the fire that starts the next spread.”

He thinks it would be a “miracle” if the island-nation could escape the second wave contagion that is devastating the region. Immediate neighbor Malaysia has seen a spike in Covid-19 infections, include a first case of the highly contagious B1617 variant, an Indian national who arrived in capital Kuala Lumpur.

Some netizens pointed out loopholes in the travel curbs that allowed Indian nationals to enter Singapore via Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. These south Asian nations are seeing a surge in virus cases that are straining their health-care systems.

In response, the Singapore authorities imposed a ban from May 1 on long-term passholders and short-term visitors who had been in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the last 14 days from entering or transiting Singapore

Were the measures “too little, too late” as some netizens believed? They had noted that before the latest spike in community, the new infections reported daily were of those who came from abroad and quarantined.

On May 2, there were 39 new cases – 14 in the community and 25 imported. Today (May 3) the numbers were 10 in the community, (of which 8 were linked to the Tan Tock Seng Hospital cluster) and 7 imported.

If the tighter curbs help keep the virus out of its borders and community cases recede, Singapore may still hold on  to its pole position as the haven to be in as Covid-19 rages on in India and its neighbours.