Singapore Urges Collaboration on Virus as First Case Seen

(Bloomberg) -- The novel coronavirus outbreak requires countries to collaborate, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, shortly before the city-state confirmed its first case.

The virus has spread faster than China’s authorities first expected and it was a matter of time before it reached Singapore, Lee said earlier Thursday in Davos. Authorities reported the first confirmed case later in the day.

“Certainly it’s gone to many cities outside of China and I fully expect that it’ll be in Singapore before too long, one way or another,” Lee said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait.

The new virus, which broke out in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has already spooked markets and prompted airports to tighten health screenings. Under pressure to contain the outbreak that has killed 17 people, infected hundreds of others and reached as far as the U.S., China has expanded travel restrictions beyond Wuhan to include two nearby cities.

In Singapore, all travelers from China also have to undergo temperature screening at Changi Airport, while a ministerial task force has been set up to deal with the issue.

The first confirmed case is a 66 year-old male Chinese national from Wuhan who arrived in Singapore on Jan. 20, the ministry of health said. In addition, a 53-year-old female Chinese national has tested preliminarily positive, and the result of a confirmatory test is pending, it said. Both have been isolated.

Given the high volume of international travel to Singapore, more suspect cases and imported cases are expected, the ministry said. Border controls have been enhanced as part of a “whole-of-government” response, it said.

Lee said that the virus so far does not seem to be as lethal as SARS, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that killed almost 800 people after it broke out in 2003. However, it can “mutate and the next virus which comes along could be worse, easily”.

The outbreak is a good example of why countries need to work together, Lee said. To counter it, countries need to trust one another, sharing data and information such as how many people have been infected and whether systems are coping well or breaking down. Unless countries can share such information, “we’re going to have a big problem for mankind,” Lee said.

“Walls are in fashion but viruses can leap over walls,” Lee said.

--With assistance from Jake Lloyd-Smith.

To contact the reporter on this story: Faris Mokhtar in Singapore at fmokhtar1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net, ;Katrina Nicholas at knicholas2@bloomberg.net, ;Joyce Koh at jkoh38@bloomberg.net, Jake Lloyd-Smith

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