Hundreds of corona patients have been arriving in Singapore in Southeast Asia for days on end. Today was another record, with 942 newly identified infections. In the early months of the corona outbreak, the city-state was known as a textbook example of how to control distribution, but the government is starting to lose control.
In the past week, the number of cases in Singapore has more than doubled. The number of officially identified infections now stands at 5992. The vast majority of these new infections are detected in the residential complexes of migrant workers. For example, 558 of the 623 newly infected individuals reported yesterday live in such complexes.
Intensive tracking
Concerns are mounting about whether health care can handle the growth in patient numbers. And that while the city-state was always the favorite example of critics with doubts about lockdowns.
Singapore, a hub of goods and people in the region, has long waited for measures to curtail citizens’ freedom of movement. The government worked with intensive tracking methods to trace the corridors of infected patients and that seemed to go well for quite some time.
The tracking app launched by the government drew international attention. The app is called TraceTogether and makes contact with other users in the area via Bluetooth, making it easier to trace people in case of infection. More than fifty countries, including the Netherlands, showed interest in the app.
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