Singapore Considers School Closures to Fight Virus

(Bloomberg) --

Singapore is considering further social distancing measures, including school closures and suspending activities such as public events and religious services, Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong says at a briefing on Tuesday.

• The government is cognizant such measures would be disruptive, and will give sufficient lead time before they’re introduced, Wong, who is also co-chair of a ministerial task force to fight the disease known as Covid-19, said.
• For example, it will allow parents to make arrangements, should schools be closed. “School closures can’t be done overnight,” he said. The government is also reviewing current advisory on large scale events and the need to tighten them, and these would include events to be held in coming months such as the National Day Parade, he said.
• The government is studying a range of measures and when exactly to implement them. This would depend on “where we are at the epidemic cycle,” he said.
• Singapore can’t implement all measures at once as that would mean shutting the city, according to Wong.
• On lifting travel restrictions, Wong said the government will look at factors such as whether there are no new cases and also whether the situation in countries where those restrictions apply has subsided: “We are not there yet,” he said, adding the government doesn’t plan to lift restrictions for the time being.
• All elderly-centric activities conducted by government agencies will be suspended for 14 days from March 11-24, according to a statement from Singapore’s health ministry on Tuesday.
• “While we encourage seniors to be active, there is now evidence of Covid-19 transmission among the seniors participating in such social activities, chiefly because some individuals who were unwell had continued to participate in them,” according to the statement.
• Many of the confirmed cases of local transmission happened during social activities and gatherings among elderly, who took part in singing classes and other activities such as qigong and line-dancing at local clubs, the statement said.
• Singapore has reported 166 confirmed cases of coronavirus as of Tuesday, with 93 people recovered and discharged from hospital. The number of cases in the city-state has accelerated in the past week due to local transmission of the virus.

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

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joyce Koh at jkoh38@bloomberg.net, Tom Redmond

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