April 9, 2003
Now that the city-state has been
identified as the embarkation point for SARS infection outside Asia, the
government is moving toward drastic quarantine measures, writes Eric Ellis
FORGET war in Iraq, it takes a very big story in Singapore to shift the mundane
daily doings of its leadership from the front pages of the state-controlled
propaganda that masquerades as media.
And SARS is that story.
Singapore isn't Ground Zero of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – that's China's Guangdong province – but the tension in this normally stultifyingly sterile tropical Mammon is palpable to the point of panicky. Even as American forces besieged Baghdad, that war has for a week been relegated below the fold of Singapore's Straits Times, which functions less as a newspaper and more as a daily government gazette on how Singaporeans should live. The government, the paper assured its readers, was protecting the citizenry.
But with six people dead and as buses and the metro operate on half-loads, Singaporeans will take more convincing than that. Many of the city-state's four million people – including this correspondent – have effectively imposed home quarantine on themselves. The rare times one ventures out – to take a taxi or stock up on shopping – many cabs won't take you (and those that do smell like hospitals), while supermarket shelves suffer telling shortages of vitamins, orange juice and vinegar, the fumes of boiling vinegar being an ancient Chinese remedy of dubious effectiveness. The city's Islamic leaders, representing about 14% of Singaporeans, told worshippers that Muslims who die of SARS will be wrapped in traditional burial cloth and then double-bagged in plastic.
Other Singaporeans are not even free to move. Invoking the Infectious Diseases Act, the government has effectively locked around 1000 people in their homes – they are suspected of having had direct contact with the 100 known SARS victims. Breaking the quarantine risks fines of up to $A20,000. Schools have shut for 10 days, a closure that's likely to be extended.
The central business district seems deserted. Anyone showing SARS symptoms has been advised to go to Singapore's Tan Tock Seng Hospital, the central command of the SARS fight. Bizarrely, when local journalists were invited to meet Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong for a briefing they were asked to complete a form which asked if they had recently visited a SARS-infected country. It seems not to have occurred to Singapore's bureaucrats that they actually live in one.
The commercial nature of Singapore has made it a breeding ground for the spread of SARS. Changi Airport is the region's aviation hub and many of those afflicted with SARS outside Asia seem to have brought it with them from Singapore. But Singapore's relative lack of democracy also gives the government absolute powers to lock the city-state down if need be. But by week's end Singapore was confident it had contained the spread. Nevertheless economists have lopped a point off 2003 growth forecasts for the wider region.