Neighboring state Singapore, has declared a full lockdown with no dine-ins, gathering limiting to 2 persons and business all to shut down after cases rose from single digits to the latest being 24.
The nation which became an example city after successfully containing the Covid-19 spread has been seeing a resurgence of the virus for past couple of weeks. Worryingly for the Singaporean authorities, are that some of the current infections are untraceable with no evidence where they are linked to. This could possibly indicate a wider community spread already persistent among the people.
As part of the guidelines for the latest lockdown, employers will have to resort back to ‘work from home’ policies, unlike Malaysia where all sectors of the economy is allowed to function, Singapore has additional restrictions on selected non-essential services. To soften the impact of its move, the Singapore Government has also announced assistance to businesses in some form or other including rental waivers for hawker stalls and coffee shops tenants.
The Circuit Breaker phase which will take effect from May 16 to June 13 will definitely dent the country’s effort on its ‘travel bubble’ plans with Hong Kong. This will have to take a back seat for now, as borders will be closed again and tracing will kick off aggressively in the City State. In the past when cases surged, the authorities managed to trace the clusters to foreign worker dorms, this time reports emerged on some clusters being from Changi Airport with about 15 cases. Nevertheless, Singapore has taken drastic measures to curb the spread and aims to be ahead of the situation.
