COVID-19

We’re more than a month into COVID-19 now. Time to write something about it. Things have calmed down in the past week or so but everything is on edge. While things in Singapore seem to be under control the economy is so deeply dependent on people shopping and dinning out and Business travel, in and out, that other countries inability to control the outbreak could tank Singapore very quickly.

Singapore’s preparedness for an epidemic is impressive, I guess having a recent memory of one helps. I personally missed the SARS outbreak [wikipedia.org] in Singapore but it killed 33 people here. When I first came here in late 2004, over a year after SARS, things had settled down. Even so there were a lot of reminders, many signs in public and workplace toilets about how to wash hands, widespread use of hand sanitizers —both personal portable bottles and larger bottles at hotel receptions and other public places— and people using surgical masks when they had any cough or other sign of illness. Over the intervening years most of that has gone away…

As I said, things seem to have mostly settled down but all the precautions are back with a bang. Hand sanitizer is everywhere again; at the coffee shops, at the restaurants, in office lobbies. Many people are wearing masks —the government keeps telling people you only need a n95 mask if you have flu like symptoms, in which case get yourself to a doctor to be tested— but there is a large number of people who are just wearing them all the time. Entrances to office buildings have thermal scanners. Business Continuity Planning is a hot topic. Many companies, including one of my local customers are using “Blue-Green” teams; staff at one site are forbidden to visit the second site and vice-versa and they are forbidden to meet outside the sites as well. Our onsite teams can’t visit our company offices. Other places have staggered working hours. Schools have canceled most activities; my older daughter missed her fifth year over seas trip last year as it was supposed to be to Hong Kong and the riots got in the way, and now COVID-19 has caused school to cancel her sixth year camp week, so sad. And since Singapore has “community spread” of the virus (meaning locals with no travel history to China or other direct link have caught the virus locally) my planned travel to South Africa next week has been canceled by the customer.

And a few weeks ago it was full on panic mode… there was a lot of panic buying and hoarding, I spend close to an hour in line to buy a few things I needed for packing school lunches because I could not get a slot for delivery via Amazon Prime, my usual way of doing weekly shopping. I saw people buying 96 rolls of toilet paper, 24 two-liter waters, shopping carts full of instant noodles or rice. I didn’t take any amazing photos but the internet has not disappointed, these are from a few WhatsApp groups, all scenes in Singapore:

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The government is trying to keep people informed, setting up a WhatsApp group with regular updates, which link to more detailed updates posted on government websites:

The efficiency of Singapore’s tracing of the transmission is a bit scary. I guess it’s the positive side of all the CCTV surveillance cameras around the island.

Links between previous cases found

3. Further epidemiological investigations and contact tracing have uncovered links between previously announced and new cases. This was made possible with the assistance of the Singapore Police Force.

Six of the locally transmitted confirmed cases (Cases 31, 33, 38, 83, 90 and 91), as well as Cases 8 and 9, are linked to The Life Church and Missions Singapore. These six cases are linked to another 23 confirmed cases (Cases 48, 49, 51, 53, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 78, 80, 81, 84, 88) who are linked to the Grace Assembly of God.

Nine of the confirmed cases (Cases 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 27, 28, 34 and 40) are linked to…

Ministry of Health Singapore, “Three More Cases Discharged; Two New Cases of COVID-19 Infection Confirmed”, [moh.gov.sg] press release

I think a lot of Singapore’s ability to handle this is not replicable in other places. The foundation and the money, is just not there and the face that Singapore is so small that there is no issues with coordination across city, state and local agencies and officials.

In the beginning COVID-19 spread quickly in Singapore, we were number two after China (a very distant number two…) but we have dropped down to number six now. Hopefully the rest of the world gets things under control quickly, but I doubt it.