SINGAPORE - As Covid-19 infections continue to rise, the number of hotels that have served as isolation facilities has jumped from more than 70 in May to more than 90 as at Wednesday (Aug 4). Since March last year, these hotels have - at some point - been used as government quarantine facilities or stay-home notice dedicated facilities (SDFs). They are activated based on current needs, the Ministry of National Development (MND) told The Straits Times. It did not say how many hotels are currently serving as such facilities. SDFs refer to accommodation for incoming travellers who are issued with stay-home notices, while government quarantine facilities are for those who need to be isolated, as they have come into close contact with Covid-19 cases. Depending on the circumstances, people who are under a quarantine order or SHN can also serve it at home, MND noted. As at Wednesday, there were around 14,000 people under quarantine, 5,000 of whom were placed in government quarantine facilities, according to data from the Ministry of Health (MOH). On Tuesday, MOH apologised for delays in ferrying people under quarantine orders to the facilities. It said the number of people under quarantine has "increased many fold" with the emergence of Covid-19 clusters linked to KTV lounges and Jurong Fishery Port, as well as other smaller clusters. The surge led to delays, as well as "communications gaps" for some under quarantine, said MOH. Most of the backlog has since been cleared and the situation "should settle down", it added. Last week, a total of 14,770 quarantine orders were issued, or an average of 2,110 a day. This number is now down to an average of around 1,490, from Sunday to Tuesday. When new hotels are contracted as government quarantine facilities or SDFs, the staff will need to undergo necessary training to manage the operational requirements, said MND. "Hotels which have been activated as government quarantine facilities and SDFs must abide by strict infection prevention and control and security protocols to ensure the safety and security of persons under SHN, persons under quarantine and staff," it said. More on this topic Related Story Fantasy stay-home notice at Swissotel: 21 days of sunrises and surprises Related Story SHN survival guide: Tried-and-tested tips to get through isolation
SINGAPORE - Their work places them at risk of infection. Yet they serve without misgivings, and with a smile. The Straits Times writers pay tribute to Singapore’s front liners – from nurses to taxi drivers, cleaners to food delivery riders – who place duty before self and even go the extra mile. Front-line workers' masks cannot hide their calm and courtesy An organised calm was my welcome home last Sunday night at Changi Airport. Go left, join this line, sit down, be tested. Order amid tension is reassuring. I had arrived from Delhi and was greeted in the terminal by a stream of front-line workers, who spend their days dealing with visitors from disparate lands. I wondered, are they nervous? I would be. Under those gloves, gowns and masks were humans, after all. They had families and futures. They had read the papers and knew about clusters and strains. Still all I got from them was evenness, generosity and courtesy. They were bound by duty. READ MORE HERE 'Thank you, Mr Technician': Gratitude from an ST correspondent quarantined in a Singapore hotel On the 20th night of my 21-day quarantine, my ceiling started leaking. Fat blobs of water appeared under the false ceiling housing the air-conditioning vent, eventually hitting the carpet of my Swissotel Stamford room at a rhythm that seemed to quicken with the minute. But I was in the middle of an important videoconference call. I dragged my trash bin under the leaking spot, hoping it would hold out for an hour or two, but quickly realised the situation was urgent. READ MORE HERE Fish soup for the soul: Acts of kindness during hospital stay and quarantine When my mother lost her sense of taste and smell after she got Covid-19 in April, she lost whatever appetite she used to have. Meat, in particular, became repulsive to her. Worried about the lack of protein in her diet, I decided to order and have delivered to her fish collagen soup, which is easier to swallow. The soup comes in vacuum-sealed cups. Upon hearing about my mother, the staff at the company - AO Broth - took it upon themselves to shrink-wrap each cup for added hygiene. READ MORE HERE Deliverers of food and cheer during a pandemic Over the past two weeks, my meals have been mostly delivered because I write a column reviewing delivery food for this paper. On a couple of occasions, the food got to me more than an hour after the stipulated time and I was really hungry by then. My first impulse was to call the delivery rider and ask him what was happening, but in the end, I did not. READ MORE HERE Touched by kindness and patience of front-line workers during quarantine I was feeling indignant. It had been almost 36 hours since my eight-year-old son Isaac was issued a quarantine order after we were informed on May 13 that he had been in close contact with a Covid-19 case in St Andrew's Junior School. He and I had spent the whole day on tenterhooks waiting to be taken to a quarantine facility. So when Certis officer Vic arrived at 11.15pm to escort us on the van ride to the facility, I was ready to voice my displeasure. READ MORE HERE Human touch makes it all bearable during quarantine It took an hour for our taxi to inch from the gate of the test-swab centre to the carpark, a distance I could have walked in less than five minutes. My son and I were getting our exit swabs at the former Da Qiao Primary School last Tuesday (May 25). If the Covid-19 tests were negative, we would be able to check out of the Mercure Singapore On Stevens hotel where we had been serving our quarantine order. READ MORE HERE If you have stories or pictures you would like to share about front liners in Singapore's fight against Covid-19, please e-mail stforum@sph.com.sg
SINGAPORE - One new community case linked to the Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) cluster has been reported on Friday (May 14). The patient was in quarantine when the case was detected, said the Health Ministry's director of medical services, Associate Professor Kenneth Mak at a press conference by the multi-ministry task force tackling Covid-19. No cases outside the quarantine net for the cluster associated with Ward 9D were detected. Ward 9D, a C class ward with 35 to 40 patients, is the nucleus of the outbreak. About two-thirds of the patients in this ward contracted Covid-19 while being treated for other conditions. There were 44 cases linked to the cluster on Thursday night, according to the Ministry of Health (MOH). Mr Mak said the TTSH cluster is reaching one incubation period. "If we continue to not see any cases, we will see how we can bring the hospital to normal operations progressively in the next few weeks.". More details on the case will be released on Friday evening. The TTSH cluster is Singapore's first hospital cluster. It comprises staff, patients and their close contacts. Close to 28,000 people have been tested in the effort to detect cases linked to it, said Health Minister Gan Kim Yong, who co-chairs the taskforce. The cluster emerged on April 27 following the diagnosis of a nurse who works in Ward 9D, a general ward. Prior to Friday's case, the last addition to the cluster was a 64-year-old Singaporean woman who was warded at Ward 9D from April 26 and moved to NCID on April 28. She was identified as a close contact of a previous case and placed on quarantine on April 29. The woman was discharged on May 2 and continued to be on quarantine. She tested positive for Covid-19 on May 11 during quarantine.
MELBOURNE • Long lines to enter stadiums and queuing for food and drinks will fade away as live sport and entertainment events around the world emerge from the pandemic, Australia's top tennis boss has said. Craig Tiley said at the Australian Open that premium experiences for fans in the future were going to be all about safety and merging digital experiences with real-life entertainment. "I think buying your own car and driving your own car, sitting in your own theatre at home, enjoying your own content is going to be much more a thing of the future than it is today, even more so. So our challenge as a sport is, how do we bring people from that environment?" he said. Tiley, who is chief executive of Tennis Australia and the tournament director at the Open, said safety protocols will become of utmost importance to the live event industry, as will technology that gives fans quicker entry and a better experience inside stadiums. "So ticketless entry, very quickly that is going to accelerate across the globe for sports entertainment," he said. "Using your app for access to food and drink will be the same, but access also on your mobile device for all sorts of opportunities for you to serve as a coach, as a critique of the stats, as a predictor of what's going to happen next. That's the kind of value add you need to add to fans." He said he hopes the Olympics will go ahead - but only if organisers add more rigorous quarantine measures. Tokyo is expected to welcome 11,000 athletes in July but is not considering wholesale quarantine for them. Tiley said his experience of organising the Australian Open suggested the Olympics needed rigorous quarantine measures. "I've seen the playbook for the Olympics and I've looked at it carefully," he said. "And compared to what we've done, we've had a far more rigorous programme than is being proposed at the Olympics." It took a gruelling effort by his 600-strong team over the last 11 months to get the year's biggest sporting event so far ready for crowds amid the pandemic. That included having 1,200 players, officials and media on 17 flights from eight countries, arranging 14 days of quarantine and more than 30,000 Covid-19 tests. Despite all that rigour, 10 people still tested positive. No new related cases have emerged, but Tiley is aware that there is still a long way to go. "I love the Olympic Games," he said. "I'd like to see it be successful. But with the experience we had, I cannot see it working." He suggested that Olympic organisers extend the Games to allow for longer quarantine periods, with athletes training in their own accommodation, such as on a university campus, before staged competition periods for each event. REUTERS
MELBOURNE • The world's top tennis stars yesterday began emerging from a gruelling fortnight stuck in their hotel rooms and raced to get match-fit before their coronavirus-disrupted season resumes in Melbourne. Australian Open players were given the green light to start exiting Covid-19 quarantine yesterday, with the first group among the 960 players, coaches and officials isolating at three Melbourne hotels leaving at 6pm local time. The rest are expected to depart by Sunday, Victoria state health officials said. Players isolating in Adelaide, including Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams, were also to be released ahead of an exhibition tournament there today. They have enjoyed the five-hour daily blocks of training while staying in reportedly bigger rooms, leading to mutterings about preferential treatment. Spanish great Rafael Nadal will start his season in South Australia with a two-set clash against world No. 3 Dominic Thiem, while top-ranked Djokovic meets Italian Jannik Sinner. Williams faces Naomi Osaka while world No. 1 Ashleigh Barty takes on Simona Halep. They then head to Melbourne, with Djokovic, Nadal, and Thiem playing in the ATP Cup from Tuesday. Barty, Williams, Halep and Osaka headline the WTA Gippsland Trophy and Yarra Valley Classic, starting Sunday. A third event, the Grampians Trophy, begins on Wednesday for players in hard lockdown who have not been able to train at all, including former Australian Open champions Victoria Azarenka and Angelique Kerber. In total, a bumper six ATP and WTA tournaments await players beginning on Sunday, all at Melbourne Park and squeezed into a week to make up for lost time in the lead up to the season-opening Grand Slam on Feb 8. Halep is looking forward to facing Barty. "I can't wait for that because it means I will be out of quarantine," the world No. 2 told Romanian website Stiripesurse. "For two weeks I've only seen my team... To have an official match after practising only with one player (fellow Romanian Irina Begu) for two weeks is going to be interesting for everybody. But I also expect good times because here we are free to do everything." Players will be free to move around the cities and surrounding regions so long as they abide by local social distancing restrictions. Some players, however, have been made to wait for their freedom and expressed confusion over their scheduled departure. ANTICIPATION I can't wait for that because it means I will be out of quarantine. For two weeks I've only seen my team. SIMONA HALEP, women's world No. 2. American Tennys Sandgren, who was among the 72 players put into a stricter quarantine in Melbourne after passengers on their flights to Australia tested positive, was unhappy he would not be able to check out of isolation until today. "I just found out we're not going to be able to leave the room until midnight tomorrow which will put us out close to 15 days in this room," he said in a video posted on Instagram yesterday. "That's also another day we can't practise." World No. 63 Oksana Kalashnikova was also puzzled. She posted a meme on Twitter saying, "Why??" and wrote: "When Australian Government orders u to stay another extra day just because." AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS
MELBOURNE • The Australian Open organisers have been forced to tear up a quarantine accommodation plan for international players a month before the first Grand Slam of the year starts, after apartment owners at a luxury hotel in Melbourne threatened legal action. Tennis Australia and government authorities had arranged for players to serve a 14-day mandatory quarantine at the Westin Melbourne ahead of the Feb 8-21 hard-court Major. But the plan was yesterday scrapped after apartment owners at the hybrid condo-hotel complained a day earlier they had not been properly consulted and would seek an injunction against it. "Following consultation between the owners of The Westin Melbourne, the hotel's existing residents and Covid-19 Quarantine Victoria, the decision has been made to accommodate players and their support teams arriving in Melbourne for the upcoming ATP (events) at an alternate hotel location," the Westin said in a statement. Graeme Efron, a lawyer representing the owners, told Reuters the quarantine plan was "never going to get through". "It was the epitome of hubris that they thought people would go along with it without being consulted," he said. International players at the Australian Open are expected to arrive in Melbourne from the middle of this month and Victoria Police Minister Lisa Neville told reporters yesterday that an alternative quarantine hotel had been secured for the players, which would be "stood up today or tomorrow". Many of the world's top players are planning to compete at tournaments at Melbourne Park in the week before the Slam. Melbourne was the epicentre of Australia's largest second-wave outbreak of Covid-19, which started at two quarantine hotels for international arrivals. More than 18,000 infections were recorded in the state during the outbreak, leading to nearly 800 deaths. Victoria recorded four new cases in Melbourne yesterday, including one in hotel quarantine. Australia has reported just over 28,500 coronavirus cases and 909 deaths in total. REUTERS
Napoli forfeit Juve game and docked 1pt MILAN • Napoli have been handed a 3-0 defeat and had one point deducted for failing to play their Serie A match away to Juventus, which was abandoned earlier this month amid confusion over Italian football's Covid-19 rules. Napoli did not travel to Turin for the match on Oct 4, saying their local health authority had told the players to stay at home after two members of their squad tested positive for the virus. The team are now eighth in the table with five points despite winning two of three matches so far. REUTERS Aussie Open hinges on govt guidelines MELBOURNE • Tennis' Australian Open will go ahead in January only if an agreement can be reached with the local authorities to allow players to practise while they undergo quarantine in Melbourne, tournament director Craig Tiley said yesterday. Melbourne remains locked down after a second spike in Covid-19 cases and there is a 14-day quarantine order in effect for all visitors to Australia. Tiley believes training during quarantine will be essential for the Australian Open to go ahead. REUTERS Kenya's Wanjiru cops 4-year ban for breach PARIS • Kenyan Daniel Wanjiru, the 2017 London Marathon winner, has been banned for four years due to an athlete biological passport violation, the sport's independent Athletics Integrity Unit said. Wanjiru, who has denied any wrongdoing, was provisionally suspended in April and his ban has been backdated to Dec 9 last year. REUTERS