According to an analysis by James Griffith released by CNN this morning, less than a month ago Singapore was being hailed as one of the countries that had got its coronavirus response right. Then cases spiked. Since March 17, Singapore's number of confirmed coronavirus cases grew from 266 to over 5,900, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Singapore has advantages that many larger countries don't. It only has one major land border, with Malaysia, and can keep a tight control on people entering by air. It also has a world-class health system and a propensity for somewhat draconian rules and policing that can benefit a government when trying to control a pandemic. So what went wrong?
The answer appears to lie in overlooked clusters of cases among migrant workers living in cramped dormitories and an underestimation of the speed at which those infections could spread through a city where lockdown measures had not been put in place.
It's unclear whether those infections came from migrant workers coming in from outside, or if the virus was circulating among the largely-untested population for some time. What is evident is that the conditions that workers live in made effective social distancing - or "home" quarantine - next to impossible, making it easy for the virus to spread.
Singapore has a good chance of getting things under control, thanks again to its small size, strong government, and well-funded healthcare system. But the recent spike in cases in Singapore has lessons for the rest of the world. As Singapore's experience shows, relaxing too soon can backfire disastrously.
Bahrain has already been tackling the issue of migrant worker camps in a commendable bid to test and isolate affected cases.
Bravo Bahrain!
