QUARANTINED IN PARADISE

A two-week quarantine in Singapore taught us about a small country's approach to Covid containment

We were forbidden to leave our room. The key card that gave us access to our hotel room on the first day of quarantine worked for exactly one entry. On the twelfth day of quarantine when my husband and I were led to our Covid test for all of ten minutes, the staff handed us a new key card just so we could reenter our premises. Singapore’s attitude towards battling Covid-19 was exemplified in that moment. This tiny nation’s two-week mandatory quarantine for most foreigners entering its borders, the implementation of it and the systematic approach to Covid containment could be a model for my country, the United States.

In mid-December, after weeks of paper work and a PCR Covid test, we flew the Pacific route from California on an 18-hour nonstop. Post retirement, my husband had accepted a six-month teaching position for a semester at National University of Singapore. We were anxious about the quality of the government-designated quarantine hotel to be assigned to us upon arrival. We’d been cautioned—about the possibility of windowless rooms and sub-par meals —by a Facebook group created by people who had served quarantine in Singapore.

We were lucky. Our room had a magnificent view. An entire wall of glass unveiled Singapore’s coastline by day and showcased a bejeweled panorama by night. The view from our perch didn’t, however, make up for the bland daily meals from the hotel’s kitchen.

“Do you want sambal olek to spice up those noodles?” I asked my husband on the first morning as he stared at his bento box. He looked up at me gratefully. “You mean you brought it from home?”

I was offended when my husband finished all his food. He said I was being too picky. “At least they give us steamed vegetables,” he said. I rolled my eyes. There was nowhere to hide and sulk, especially in a 200 square foot digs that also packed in a shower and a toilet.  

Seventeen floors below us, life seemed to have returned to normal. We learned that Singapore’s famous shopping mecca on Orchard Road—where our hotel was—was bracing for crowds of Christmas shoppers. The silence in our room—when the television wasn’t turned on—was magnified by the quotidian sounds of two people going about their lives. The doorbell rang three times a day announcing breakfast, lunch and dinner. When we’d ascertained that no one was hovering around in the corridor, we swiftly opened the door to pick up the food bag placed on a satin-covered chair stationed outside.

We longed for cacophony. Our Zoom calls to friends and family were noisy affirmations of life offering a reprieve from a strange, muted existence. On our quarantine Facebook group, some people complained of panic attacks. Perhaps that was why the volunteers who called daily from Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (MOM) were always so pleasant and compassionate. Their questions were kind but pointed. “Do you have a cough or fever?” “Are you making sure the quarantine app, HOMER, is running on your phones all day?” MOM would know right away if I left my room. We submitted our temperature through HOMER three times a day; we received a reminder, of course—within a half hour window of when the information was due. Barring these interruptions, we had to find ways to fill the quiet of the day. 

I found the progression of nature comforting. We witnessed, daily, the equatorial spectacle of both menacing thunderstorms and sudden shafts of light piercing through pewter-grey skies. On the sunniest afternoon we caught sight of a fleet of cruise ships waiting in the harbor beyond Marina Bay Sands. On some rare cloudless mornings a flock of pigeons flew about in a formation spanning the open space above the trees.

If our window into Singapore’s beauty and bustle made us momentarily forget that we had no access to fresh air, it also amplified a simple truth about being human and healthy: Our comportment in the community should be no different from our demeanor on the road; Follow the law; safety first; look out for yourself and for others.

Sometimes, as I watched the orderly, silent swarm of traffic down below, I felt restless. I couldn’t wait to enter the real world. I knew, also, that when I did, I’d have to obey the rules of life in another country.

By the time we exited quarantine in late-December, this island nation of 5.7 million people had lost just 29 people to Covid. Its fatality rate was the lowest in the world, yet the whole country continued to be on high alert. Everyone wore a mask.

In April 2020, even as the country enforced the “Circuit Breaker”, it had already announced TraceTogether, a contact tracing app developed in eight weeks by the government’s technology arm. Singapore’s Ministry of Health announced that the fine for not wearing masks in public would be $300; a second offence would levy a $1000 penalty.

In all, upon release from quarantine, my husband and I had spent 336 hours in isolation. We’d cleaned our hotel room, too. A bucket, cleaning liquid, brushes and cotton towels were reminders that keeping our quarters clean was our problem. Toilet tissues, soaps, towels were dropped off as needed on our satin-draped chair. On the eighth day of quarantine, we received fresh bed linen—four pillows, a flat sheet and a duvet cover—along with a QR code directing us to a YouTube video on how to stuff a comforter into a duvet cover.

Despite the constraints of quarantine, our confinement in Singapore was luxurious. We ordered takeout whenever the hotel food became oppressive. We had a shelf groaning with comestibles that family and friends so thoughtfully sent us. Yet, on some days, this forced quarantine felt oppressive, and I felt a rising sense of dread. A health crisis at another quarantine hotel gave us the heebie-jeebies.

On December 19, the fifth day of our quarantine, we learned that 13 people at The Mandarin Orchard—a hotel down the road from us—had tested positive by the end of their quarantine and that they had all served their time in the same tower of the hotel between Oct 22 and Nov 11, 2020. A national laboratory found that those 13 imported cases—from ten different parts of the world—were infected by coronavirus strains that were genetically similar. Investigations began on whether the source of this virus could be the hotel itself and, in all, 571 hotel employees, besides several hundred other guests, were tested. Mandarin Orchard was shuttered for fourteen days. My husband and I prayed that no one on our flight tested positive and that we did not contract something from our hotel staff. On the fourteenth day, we were relieved when our Covid test came out negative.

The day after our quarantine ended, we celebrated with a Singapore Sling at the bar of the historic Raffles Hotel. Right away, we learned the Covid etiquette, too. We stopped in front of temperature kiosks. We used TraceTogether to check in and check out of public spaces. We refrained from talking much in public. Inside Singapore’s public transportation system, the warning “Mask On, Volume Off”—a plea to wear a mask and observe silence to contain the spread of droplets in an enclosed space—was plastered everywhere. The Straits Times regularly warned readers that masks and social distancing were critical even though the nation was in “Phase 3” as of December 28. This new phase now allowed eight people to gather inside a home as opposed to the limit of five for most of 2020. The marching orders—duly obeyed by the populace—had ensured five Covid victims for every million people. Compare that with one victim for every 1000 people in the United States as of this writing.

Singapore’s hard-nosed, consistent approach to fighting Covid is in line with the Japanese stance on health: Sacrifice an individual’s need for the sake of the common good. When someone in Japan contracts a cold, he dons a mask, the idea being that his ill-health should not affect anyone in the community. It’s this community-driven approach that Singapore has executed masterfully during this pandemic to reiterate to its people that the course of human history on this planet is a coordinated effort. It’s so easy to perceive, yet so hard to put into practice.