It is 2nd June 2020 and Singapore is officially out of the "circuit breaker" phase (Singapore's government's term for a lock-down). Our government has planned for a 3-phase process to fully re-open our economy. Phase 1 is called "Safe Reopening" and it will take at least 4 weeks.
For me, nothing much has changed as I am still working from home. However, some of my colleagues are starting to report in office physically. Many measures are put in place to maintain safe distancing and working/lunch hours are also staggered to avoid overcrowding.
I did not experience this first hand but one of the notable changes is that there are now no safe distancing measures being enforced on public transport. Here is a picture from our local news outlet and you can see that the train is once again packed with people. Though people are all asked to wear masks now, the sight is still quite concerning to me. My relatives working in the healthcare sector said that the healthcare workers are asked to brace for another potential wave of community spread after circuit breaker. Let's see how it goes...
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In addition, on top of some people heading back to work, some students are also heading back to schools. Perhaps that is why we are seeing a slight uptick in road traffic during the morning rush hour.
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COVID-19 cases in Singapore
In terms of COVID-19 cases, the numbers within the foreign workers dormitories are now declining as fast as I thought it would. We are still seeing triple digits new case counts since my last post on the COVID-19 situation in Singapore. Perhaps I was being too optimistic 😅. The total case counts in Singapore has now broke 35,000 and is now 35,836.
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Something encouraging is that the active cases are declining and the number of critical cases remains low. I hope we can keep this up after we enter the reopening phase.
Some other thoughts
While some of the countries here in Asia are looking to restart our economy, the US seemed to be facing a new problem. The death of George Floyd has sparked a fresh round of protests against police brutality and racism. I think the stress which COVID-19 brought to the society also fueled the protest in a way and the movement seems to be spreading quite quickly across the US. Let's hope things do not get out of hand over there.
What a year 2020 has been so far...
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The danger of a second wave is always there. But with people more aware of the danger now, as well as the safeguards in place, I hope everyone is sensible enough to play their parts.
Lets hope so 🙏
It's a well-shaken 2020 with a lot of minute-by-minute news.
In Venezuela, most economic and social sectors are also beginning to recover. A 5-day plan of flexible activities is being implemented, immediately after 10 days of quarantine. That is to say, 5 by 10. It began yesterday, let us hope that it will go well.
Good day, my friend. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Thanks for your comment! Hope things get better everywhere during the 2nd half of the year
@culgin as seen the photo i can see nothing has changed , but we have to take care of our self because we have to keep our family safe, prevention is better then cure.
Indeed. If everyone just do his/her own part, things will certainly get better