Reopening the city-state has stoked a surge in new cases and panic among anxious residents
Protesters
from the US to Australia and across Europe have railed against
government interference and repressive Covid restrictions. But in
Singapore, a sizeable chunk of the population is asking for even greater
state control.
A petition is circulating in the city-state to
bring back mandatory quarantine for all overseas travellers, despite the
Delta variant already circulating widely, while a quarter of
Singaporeans are in favour of a return to lockdown restrictions.
Singapore’s
government announced with great optimism in June that it would change
its “zero-Covid” approach and instead learn to live with the virus.
Its
strategy was held up as a model for other countries looking for a safe
way out of the pandemic. But as cases inevitably rose in August and
September, panic set in.
Authorities responded this week by
rolling back freedoms for residents despite outpacing most advanced
economies in fully vaccinating 82 per cent of its population.
Tightly
controlled Singapore, whose quasi-authoritarian government largely bars
any protest, had come the furthest among Asian cities in opening up.
The decision has led to a rare occurrence in the city-state: rising public dissent over the government’s strategy.
“I
have never in 20 years seen the academic or medical professional
industry so vocal in their disagreement with the government as it is
over the treatment of asymptomatic cases,” said Jeremy Lim, of the Saw
Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of
Singapore.
Nearly a quarter of people in Singapore felt the
latest restrictions were too lax, while more than half felt they were
“just right”, according to market research firm Milieu Insight this
week. One quarter felt they were too strict.
“What surprised me
is how divided people were. There were a lot of people upset by the
measures but an equal amount were supportive of more restrictions,” said
Stephen Tracy, managing director of Milieu. “There is a sense, however,
that the latest rules are not in line with the strategy the government
laid out.”
A petition calling for all returning travellers to
quarantine for two weeks in designated hotels or government facilities
garnered nearly 3,000 signatures by Thursday.
“There is a lower
tolerance for the sheer number of deaths and cases seen in other
countries because of the way we avoided that for most of the pandemic,”
said Dale Fisher, a senior infectious diseases consultant at Singapore’s
National University Hospital.
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