TL;DR – He urged everyone not to be overly pessimistic and praised Singapore for its precautionary measures.
Dustin Du, a Chinese national, has taken to his Weibo account to share his 48-hour quarantine experience at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) as a “high-risk” suspect case.
The post comes after some Chinese netizens were seen berating and criticizing Singapore’s approach in preventing and controlling the Covid-19 situation under a particular Weibo post on @新加坡眼.
Responding to the criticisms, Du wrote:
“On the whole, although the scale of preventive measures in which Singapore has undertaken is much smaller than that of China’s, it is already considerably well planned and organised. After all, apart from China, most countries do not encourage people to wear a mask.
Theoretically, since Singapore has already imposed a travel ban on Chinese travellers, and as long as Permanent Resident (PR)/work pass holders from mainland China can abide by the 14-day Leave of Absence (LOA) requirements while the authorities conduct investigations to trace close contacts of the current patients, there shouldn’t be any broader community spread in Singapore.
But of course, these are just theories and there exists the possibility of these theories being refuted.
While I can understand why netizens on Weibo are extremely concerned, since you may have more information about the epidemic in China than the general public in Singapore, however, in my opinion, there is no need to be too blindly pessimistic.”
He then continued his post, detailing his quarantine experience at the NCID.
Here’s a translation of Du’s quarantine experience in full:
Since arriving in Singapore from Hang Zhou on Jan 30, I’ve been afraid of being a carrier of the virus and bringing the virus to Singapore.
On Feb 7, I went to bed at 5am after learning the news about Dr Li Wenliang.
I woke up at 10am and my body temperature was normal then. But I had this unsettling feeling about my racing heartbeat, and I was experiencing shortness of breath.
After contemplating for half an hour and speaking to my friend who’s a doctor, I decided to make a trip to the hospital for an X-ray.
For a peace of mind, and also because I thought to myself, “Health comes first.”
Upon arriving at the hospital, I was immediately assigned to the “high-risk” group because of my recent travel history to the Zhejiang Province.
After going through a series of inspections and questions, and also because I have “a recent travel history to Zhejiang Province, shortness of breath, and a heart rate of 120 (now that I think about it, it might be because I was scared at that point of time)”, I was… forced to be warded in an isolation room.
Even though my lungs were completely normal, and I had no fever.
I was warded in NCID’s negative-pressure room for two nights.
After two negative nucleic acid tests, and after I had my temperature, heart rate and blood pressure taken once every four hours, my heart rate and breathing were back to normal.
I was finally discharged on Feb 9, noon.
During this period of time, my emotions were mixed.
On the one hand, I thought I asked for trouble myself since I went to the hospital on my own accord, and in a way, I have also wasted the medical resources.
However, at the same time, I was very thankful to be treated by such high standard medical facilities. I can’t help but to feel bad whenever I think about the people in Hubei.
In any case, I just hope this epidemic will end soon. Press on Hubei!
And in terms of the current situation, personally, I feel that the Ministry of Health (MOH) has been very organised. Therefore, I hope that people will not be too worried, and try to wear a mask when visiting crowded places.
PS: Thank you to all healthcare workers!
9 have fully recovered from the virus
As of Feb 11, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Singapore is at 47.
This number may seem relatively high, but let’s also not forget that the number of recovery cases has also increased, with nine fully recovered from the virus. The number of recovery cases should gradually rise over the next few days too.
Like what Du stressed in his Weibo post, let us not be too overly pessimistic about the situation and have faith in our medical team.
That being said, even if the situation may get worse before it can get better as the authorities comb through the web of contact tracing to weed out all the possible cases, we should be confident that together, we can overcome this.
We’ve done this before, and we will survive this again.
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