People wearing protective face masks exit a mall along the Orchard Road shopping belt in Singapore, April 10, 2020. (YONG TECK LIM / AP)
Singaporean Bill Ho said he made the toughest decision of his life on April 6-closing the restaurant he had run for 12 years as the novel coronavirus outbreak escalated in the city state.
Located near the island nation's bustling Chinatown, 8 Cafe& Bar had taken a significant hit from the contagion, with the number of diners falling sharply.
Singapore, which has a population of about 6 million, was one of the first countries to report COVID-19 infections
Three days before Ho closed the business, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong gave a televised speech, announcing significantly stricter measures to guard against infections.
Noting a rise in the number of COVID-19 cases each day, as well as local transmissions and clusters, Lee said the measures would act as a "circuit breaker "and would be in place for one month to help reduce the risk of large numbers of cases, as well as gradually reducing new infections.
Meanwhile, Singapore's Ministry of Health said all restaurants, hawker centers, coffee shops, food courts and other food and beverage outlets would only open for takeout orders and deliveries.
However, Ho said it was almost impossible for his restaurant to cater to takeout orders.
"It mainly served fusion cuisine, homemade coffee and cocktails. I made nearly all the dishes and drinks. My guests liked to dine in, drink and chat in my restaurant. Since the outbreak emerged, we had seen fewer guests, and in the end, we were serving only two or three tables a day, which is why I decided to close."
The city's diverse restaurants and hawker centers are popular among locals, as they are conveniently located in neighborhoods and provide different types of food.
They are ideal places to socialize with family, friends and neighbors, with many people taking time to linger over a cup of coffee or a meal. Last year, Singapore launched a bid to have its hawker culture inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
The government's call for people to stay home has dispersed the crowds that normally throng Bukit Pasoh Road, the location of Ho's restaurant. Although it was dinner time during a recent visit, the number of people in the area was significantly lower than usual.
The stricter measures announced in Singapore require all students to undertake home-based learning and for workplaces to remain shuttered until May 4.
In this April 3, 2020 file photo, an ambulance carrying staff in protective clothing leaves the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, where patients suffering from the COVID-19 novel coronavirus are being cared for, in Singapore. (ROSLAN RAHMAN / AFP)
The government has also banned public and private social gatherings of any size, with residents who breach the regulation liable to six months' imprisonment or a fine of up to the equivalent of US$7,000.
Singapore, which has a population of about 6 million, was one of the first countries to report COVID-19 infections. It recorded its first case on Jan 23, when a 66-year-old man who traveled to the city from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak in Hubei province, tested positive.
The number of confirmed cases rose quickly after this, and the country became one of the world's first major hotspots for the disease until mid-February, when the number of patients who recovered surpassed new infections.
Approach praised
By adopting aggressive methods, the government managed to keep the number of cases low and was able to track them.
On March 10, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised Singapore's "all-government approach" in containing COVID-19.
The previous month, Tedros said the WHO was very impressed with the efforts made by Singapore to find every case, follow up contacts and stop transmission.
Since the first case was reported in Singapore, three words－trace, detect, isolate－have been the cornerstone of its fight against COVID-19. The nation has been meticulous in tracing confirmed cases and identifying people who may have been exposed to the virus.
The government has launched an app that alerts users if they have been in close contact with a confirmed case. Called TraceTogether, the app exchanges short-distance Bluetooth signals with other users, providing officials with a database to track potential COVID-19 carriers.
Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious diseases specialist at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital in Singapore, said the app has helped the authorities slow the spread of the disease and track all possible cases promptly.
Mass testing is being carried out. Infected patients are hospitalized and people who have had contact with a patient are quarantined. Awareness of social distancing is also being promoted by the government and the media.
These efforts helped contain the virus in Singapore for about two months, but the situation changed after 47 cases were traced to a dinner held on Feb 15.By the middle of last month, the country had some 400 confirmed cases, but no deaths. As of Tuesday, Singapore had 2,918 confirmed cases and nine deaths.
The rising numbers show how COVID-19 can spread－even after initial success in containing the virus－if people do not practice proper safety precautions.
Disease experts said breaches in Singapore's lauded virus defense efforts underline the challenge of containing the pandemic globally.
According to officials, the surge in the number of confirmed cases in Singapore stems from two groups: thousands of people who returned from overseas; and hundreds of thousands of migrant workers from South Asia.
Singapore is now in the grip of what experts term "second-wave infections".
Initially, many of the cases involved people returning to Singapore who contracted the virus overseas, mostly in Europe. However, in recent weeks, there has been a worrying rise in locally transmitted cases.
As the gravity of the outbreak became clear globally, thousands of people returned to the Lion City－including more than 500 who unwittingly brought the virus with them.
At the time, only those with COVID-19 symptoms were required to stay home for two weeks. According to some observers, it was a mistake not to limit interaction among returnees. But experts said this was "hindsight", as people now know a lot more about the disease compared with the knowledge they had of it only last month.
Foreigners account for more than one-third of Singapore's workforce, and over 200,000 migrant workers in the country are from Pakistan, Bangladesh and other Asian countries. They live in 43 registered dormitories across the country.
More than 450 infections have been linked to the dormitories, which mainly house workers from Bangladesh and India, according to the Singaporean Ministry of Health
In recent weeks, multiple clusters of confirmed COVID-19 cases have been found in the often-cramped dormitories.
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The authorities have placed quarantine orders on four dormitories, with workers told to stay in shared rooms for 14 days. They are still being paid and are receiving deliveries of food and other necessities.
It is estimated that some 50,000 workers are under quarantine. The largest dormitory, Sungei Tengah Lodge, comprises 10 residential blocks and can house up to 25,000 workers.
More than 450 infections have been linked to the dormitories, which mainly house workers from Bangladesh and India, according to the Singaporean Ministry of Health.
Doubts raised
Military camps, exhibition centers and vacant public housing blocks have been designated to temporarily separate healthy essential workers from those quarantined in dormitories
Doubts have been raised over the effectiveness of quarantining large numbers in confined areas, based on the case of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which initially reported just a few confirmed cases. However, these grew to become the largest cluster outside China for weeks.
The question has also been raised of whether workers living in tight spaces can practice social distancing, which remains one of the most effective ways to prevent the virus spreading.
Transient Workers Count Too, a charity group helping migrant workers, said in a statement: "When social distancing in dormitory rooms with 12 to 20 men per room is effectively impossible, should one worker in a room be infected－and he could be asymptomatic－the repeated contact he has with his roommates because of confinement would heighten the risk to his mates. The infection rate in the dorm could increase dramatically."
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The fear is that in the next week or so, the number of confirmed cases will rise significantly.
Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota in the United States, said, "For a country that has been praised internationally for how it dealt with the pandemic, what Singapore is really showing the rest of the world is that this is just a difficult virus to beat back and keep down."
