ABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Singapore began on January 23, 2020, when the Ministry of Health confirmed the first imported case from Wuhan. ‘Singapore has in place a crisis management system designed to prepare for and respond to a wide variety of hazards’. Early on, Singapore ‘was seen as a model in its early, swift response to the virus’. The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General was impressed with the government’s efforts to ‘find every case, follow up with contacts, and stop transmission’. In Singapore, the multiple surveillance methods ‘complemented one another to identify infected persons, with the overlapping components constituting safety nets’. In early March, new fast-track COVID-19 swab tests were deployed at checkpoints for symptomatic travellers, regardless of travel history. Travel advisory was later extended to avoiding travel to the entire Hubei Province, and all non-essential travel to China, the Republic of Korea Japan, Iran, Italy, France, Spain, and Germany.
