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10 Mar 2020  (445 Views) 
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Covid-19 crisis


My view about the Costa Fortuna
The cruise ship Costa Fortuna left Singapore two weeks ago. The passengers were not allowed to disembark in Malaysia and Thailand due to the corona virus scare. The ship has to return to Singapore.

All disembarking passengers have to be temperature scanned. Those who have a fever or have travelled to northern Italy are required to go for further checks at the hospital.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/transport/coronavirus-costa-fortuna-ship-passengers-with-travel-history-to-northern-italy

I find these measures to be adequate.

As the port of embarkation, it is our duty to the passengers to allow them to return to shore. We cannot leave them stranded.

There is a risk that some of the disembarking passengers might have caught the virus from other passengers during the cruise and the symptoms have not appeared.

Some worried citizens have asked for these passengers to be kept in quarantine for another 14 days from disembarkation.

Should this further step be adopted?

I would leave this matter to the people in charge. I do not join the call to ask them to be quarantined. I do not think that it is fair to impose a burden on these passengers or the front line workers who have to take care of them.

If I were to extend this argument, should we not call for all the people who attended the private dinner function at SAFRA Jurong be quarantined? I think that it would impose a burden on them, and perhaps quite unnecessarily.

Even if some of them had the virus, the risk of its spread and the harm that it can cause, is probably not alarming.

I suspect that the virus is already widespread in Singapore, and in most cases, it does not spread or cause much harm. It could be due to our warm weather.

If it was serious, we would already have got the large scale infection and deaths by now. We did receive many tens of thousands of visitors from countries where the virus was quite widespread.

I observe that many cases of infected persons in Singapore were mild and the patients had been discharged. There is no death so far.

There is the fear that large scale infection can overwhelm the medical facilities. This is a risk, but it has not happened, and is not likely to (I hope).

We should not be alarmed until there is evidence of a serious trend. So far, I do not see any need to be pessimistic.

I wish all the passengers of the Costa Fortuna a good rest from your unpleasant experience and a good stay in Singapore.

Tan Kin Lian


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