Singapore started talk of waves of Covid cases, PH officials copied

First word

TO reareally put an end to the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) “second wave” controversy, it should be placed on record that: 1) a second wave of infections is not a finding by medical science, but rather a concoction by government propaganda; and that 2) Singapore started talk about a second wave and even promoted talk about a third wave and a fourth wave.

This conundrum does not end with the official burial by the Palace of the statement of Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd that the Philippines is now experiencing a second wave of Covid-19 infections.

Before Palace spokesman Harry Roque was finished with his usual media briefing, the chief implementer of national policy against Covid-19, Secretary Carlito Galvez announced to the media that the second wave of infections will most likely be supplied by returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

Four waves of cases in Singapore

After conducting an extensive investigation of reports in the media, wherein various countries voiced their fears of a second wave of infections, I am personally convinced that the government of Singapore started this brouhaha.

In its official website, Singapore punctiliously records not just one but four waves of cases in the city state. It even documents the dates when the waves started and when they ended.

Data is a fetish with Singapore and it has earned for its pains the distinction of having the highest number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia. Singapore’s official website reports: “The first case relating to the Covid-19 pandemic in Singapore was confirmed on 23 January. Early cases were primarily imported until local transmission began to develop in February and March. By late-March and April, Covid-19 clusters were detected at multiple dormitories for foreign workers, which soon contributed to an overwhelming proportion of new cases in the country. Singapore currently has the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia, having overtaken Indonesia on 19 April.”

It then presents a timeline of the pandemic in Singapore:

Wave 1: Imported cases from China (January 2020)

“National authorities began reporting on suspected cases on 4 January, however the first confirmed case of infection was reported on 23 January, who was a tourist from Wuhan. Until 30 January, there were a total of 13 confirmed cases, all of whom were visitors to Singapore from China.The first case involving a Singaporean was confirmed on 31 January after returning from Wuhan. Contact tracing procedures were put in place to identify close contacts of the confirmed cases who were placed under 14-day quarantines in order to ring-fence the potential spread of the virus.”

Wave 2: Early local clusters ( February to March 2020)

“These imported cases eventually lead to clusters of local transmissions being formed. The first cluster was reported on 4 February at Yong Thai Hang, a shop that mainly serves Chinese tourists. It was identified as the locus of the infection where four women without recent history of travel to China contracted the virus. The shop was affected when a tour group from Guangxi, China visited it along with other locations such as the Diamond Industries Jewellery Company at Harbour Drive, where another case occurred, while touring Singapore. The tour group had returned back to China and the Chinese authorities had confirmed that two of the group was infected. Authorities then raised the nation’s Disease Outbreak Response System Condition level from Yellow to Orange after more cases with unclear origins surfaced on 7 February, with Prime Minister Lee expressing his worry about some cases with no known chain of transmission of the infection directly from Wuhan or indirectly via cases traced in Singapore. He suggested that it might become “futile to try to trace every contact.” More clusters emerged at various locations, where there were large scale gatherings such as business conference, Chinese New Year dinner gatherings and church related activities. Two clusters were linked when several cases in each cluster was found to have infected each other through serological tests, the first such successful test in the world.”

Wave 3: Returning Singaporeans and permanent residents from overseas (March 2020)

“In March, as the number of cases began to rise exponentially around the world, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Ministry of Education began to encourage Singaporeans to return home. Various institutes of higher learning recalled their students currently on overseas internship or exchange, and the MFA began liaising with airlines to facilitate flights to key cities when necessary during this period, to cater to demand for return flights to Singapore. This led to an increase in number of imported cases, in which over 70 percent of cases from March 16 to March 19 were Singaporeans and long-term pass holders returning from overseas.”

Wave 4: Spread among migrant worker population (April to May 2020)

“In April, the bulk of cases began to shift from imported cases to migrant workers living in dormitories, resulting in the authorities imposing a mandatory quarantine of 20,000 migrant workers in two dormitories gazetted as isolation areas, namely the S11 Dormitory and Westlite Toh Guan. Following which, the number of cases in migrant worker dormitories began to soar as more clusters were detected in other migrant worker dormitories, reaching a single-daily high of 1,396 cases recorded among migrant workers on 20 April. On 21 April, MOM announced that all foreign workers in dormitories were to stop work until 4 May to curb the rising spread of the coronavirus among this group that has been hard hit. The number of cases among migrant workers living in dormitories continued to increase and remain high throughout the months of April and May with aggressive testing by the authorities.”

My research team also found reports and warnings of a second wave of cases in China and other countries. But the distinction of seeing a third or fourth wave belongs to Singapore alone.

Centralization of PH information

Since the confusion and panic stirred by Secretary Duque’s announcement of a second wave of Covid-19 cases in the country, Malacañang has moved swiftly to squelch the misinformation. It has announced the centralization of information on the pandemic, and it has produced a retraction by the health secretary and the Department of Health (DoH).

After the Malacañang rebuff, the Health department is now toeing the Palace line in saying that the Philippines remains in the throes of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

An aide of Secretary Duque on Thursday recanted his statement that the country was “actually” now experiencing the second wave of the pandemic, along with an apology “for the confusion that this has caused.”

“The DoH confirms that, yes, we are in the first wave driven by local community transmission. We are still in this wave,” the assistant said at a DoH online press conference.

Yesterday, Malacañang said the government’s information campaign on the Covid- 19 response would be centralized and only Roque and Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire were officially authorized to speak on the progress of the nation’s fight against the pandemic.

This news apparently did not reach the chief implementer of the national policy against Covid-19, Secretary Galvez, who told the media on Friday that the government was preparing for a possible second wave of infections in the country.

Galvez, who is not a member of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases, said the government was preparing for a new spike in Covid-19 cases that might come from the influx of returning OFWs from countries like the United States, Italy, Spain and parts of the Middle East.