Covid-19 crisis Safe to open the border
If we continue to close the border and make it difficult for travelers to come to Singapore, our business will continue to suffer. Many have to close down, leading to retrenchment of workers.

Can we take the risk and open our borders?

Yes, we should open our borders now. I believe that the risk is very small and can be managed.

Here are my reasons:

a) We can test the incoming visitors to see if they are infected with the coronavirus. We only need to isolate the infected ones.

b) Even if some of the travelers are not detected on entry, the infection is likely to be mild. It will not cause much harm and will not lead to the spread of the virus.

c) We can strengthen our protocol to identify the symptomatic cases and send them for testing. Those who are infected can be isolated. We can provide self service temperature scanning stations. Those who have a temperature should be asked to go to the special clinic for testing. The testing will be free for them.

The key feature of my proposal is:

a) Don't worry about the asymptomatic and mild cases.
b) Focus on the symptomatic cases and make it easy to test them. Send them for isolation when they are detected.
c) There may be a few infected cases moving in the community. We do not need to worry about them, if they remain mild.

If we adopt this approach, we can open up the border safely. This will help the economy to recover and jobs to be protected.

If this approach leads to a large increase in serious, infected cases, we can reintroduce the strict measures at that time. I do not think that we will reach this stage. We can take this risk and be ready to change our strategy if the infection become worse than expected. 

Tan Kin Lian


 

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