How Taiwan and Singapore managed to contain COVID-19, while letting normal life go on

Commuters wearing face masks as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus look at their mobile phones on the Mass Rapid Transit train in Singapore on March 18, 2020. Catherine Lai/AFP via Getty Images

The six million city-states are a transportation hub for East Asia and for a few days had the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases in the world. But his total stood at a modest 345 on Friday, with no deaths.

And as Canadians curl up in their homes or go shopping at the local supermarket, life in Singapore is progressing more or less as usual.

It is not that the residents there are acting recklessly in the face of the pandemic. On the contrary. In fact, like Taiwan, another Asian country closely related to the Chinese epicenter of the coronavirus, Singapore has taken aggressive and innovative measures to keep the disease under control. Taiwan, which received 2.7 million visitors from China in 2019, had just 135 cases and two deaths as of Friday, up from 846 cases and 10 deaths in Canada.

Strict control

They have certainly avoided the kind of massive social disruption that has wreaked havoc on the economies of various nations. Schools, workplaces, shops, and restaurants remain open, although restrictions have slowly tightened in recent days.

Both nations have focused on strictly isolating people who have or could have COVID-19, strictly controlling international travel and jealously pursuing those who had contact with the infected.

For its part, Singapore has deployed police officers as detectives to trace contacts and has used government-issued cell phones to monitor those in quarantine.

While Taiwan, it fused citizens’ recent international travel history with their digital health insurance files and allowed doctors and pharmacists access to everything while imposing heavy fines on quarantine violators.

Regina native Chris Beingessner said the 4,000-student American school in Singapore, where he is deputy principal, has taken steps to prevent overcrowding and will carry out two weeks of online learning, but otherwise little has changed.

Canada should seek guidance in Taiwan and Singapore, says Dr. Jeff Kwong, a Toronto family doctor, and professor of public health at the University of Toronto.

Source: Tom Blackwell | National Post