Providing a helping hand and giving back to the community is especially important during these trying Covid-19 times. Whilst staying home may be a luxury for some of us, there are others out there struggling to deal with their school, work, finances and more.
If you are in a position to donate and want to do so, you can find many charities accepting donations on Giving.sg. But donating cash isn’t the only way you can give back.
You can also donate by buying bubble tea. Yes, bubble tea. How? By ordering through Milksha, a leading bubble tea brand in Taiwan.
They’re currently offering island-wide delivery for their classic beverages such as Fresh Milk with Honey Pearl, Fresh Taro Milk, Brown Sugar Milk with Honey Pearl, Refreshing Orange Green Tea and more.
With every purchase of a drink or ice cream through Milksha’s page, Milksha will donate $0.50 to The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund. This fund helps to provide pocket money to children from low income families to help them through school.
SINGAPORE: Singapore recorded two new COVID-19 cases in the community as of noon on Thursday (May 14), the lowest daily count since the start of the “circuit breaker”.
The daily number of discharged patients also crossed the 1,000 mark for the first time, with 1,164 more COVID-19 patients making a full recovery, the Ministry of Health (MOH) reported.
The first of the two new community cases is a 76-year-old Singaporean man who is part of a cluster at 63 Senoko Drive. He tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday.
The other case is a 43-year-old permanent resident, who is part of a cluster at TTJ Design & Engineering and is a contact of Cases 10923, 12471, 15097 and 21384.
He experienced onset of symptoms on Monday and tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday.
“The number of new cases in the community has decreased, from an average of eight cases per day in the week before, to an average of five per day in the past week,” said MOH in an update on Thursday evening.
“The number of unlinked cases in the community has also decreased, from an average of three cases per day in the week before, to an average of two per day in the past week.”
A total of 752 new COVID-19 cases were reported on Thursday, while a new cluster was identified at 2 Perumal Road.
NUMBER OF DISCHARGED PATIENTS HIT NEW HIGH
A total of 1,164 more COVID-19 patients were discharged on Thursday, the first time the number of recovered patients in a day has crossed the 1,000 mark.
MOH said on Thursday that there are currently 1,072 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Most are stable or improving, while 20 are in a critical condition in the intensive care unit.
A total of 19,032 patients are isolated and cared for at community facilities, MOH said. These are cases who have mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for COVID-19.
Twenty-one people have died from COVID-19 in Singapore. No deaths were reported on Thursday.
The remaining 750 cases reported on Thursday were work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories.
The ministry said it continues to pick up many more cases among work permit holders residing in dormitories, including in factory-converted dormitories, because of extensive testing in these premises.
SINGAPORE: COVID-19 might be “with us for a long time”, but the coronavirus can be contained if Singapore follows its “dance steps”, said leading infectious diseases specialist Leo Yee Sin on Thursday (May 14).
Calling the ongoing “circuit breaker” a “hammer” to curb the spread of the virus, she said that while strict safe distancing measures have flattened the infection curve in the community, such restrictions are “not sustainable”.
“Eventually, we need to come out of that lockdown situation,” said Professor Leo, who was speaking at a webinar organised by the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and National University Health System.
However, it’s unlikely that the virus will be eliminated, so the next step would be to minimise its impact, she said.
“What is left is for us to now develop a system to be able to contain the virus in a way that we basically follow the dance step of the virus,” said Prof Leo, who is the executive director of the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID).
Source: Tomas Pueyo via National Centre for Infectious Diseases.
She said that the most likely scenario would be “waves of the epidemic interspersed with periods of low-level transmissions”. Singapore needs to have the ability and healthcare capacity to cope with intermittent surges of infections, she added.
“It is extremely important that we need to be able to sustain that (public health) capacity and capability; continue to have active case finding (and be) able to contact trace, isolate, quarantine and have a rapid response team to be able to respond to any of the potential epidemic waves in the future,” she said.
The World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Wednesday that the coronavirus may never go away.
“It is important to put this on the table: this virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away,” WHO emergencies expert Mike Ryan told an online briefing.
“I think there are no promises in this and there are no dates. This disease may settle into a long problem, or it may not be.”
Prof Leo gave a similar assessment, adding that with the suppression of the virus, Singapore can reduce the rate of infection and the death toll while buying time until vaccines become available.
“We are all waiting for more good news on effective pharmaceutical interventions – whether remdesivir will one day become standard treatment – and possibly all waiting for one day that we can see effective vaccines made available,” she added.
Singapore has recorded 26,098 cases of COVID-19 so far, with the vast majority of the cases among foreign workers living in dormitories. Twenty-one people have died of complications due to COVID-19.
The number of new daily cases in the community has fallen to single digits in recent days, about five weeks into the circuit breaker period.
Prof Leo, a veteran of several epidemics including the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, admitted that this was one of the “hardest viruses” she has tackled.
“I must say that no outbreaks are exactly the same,” she said.
“They are different viruses, different characteristics.
“We thought that we would not be challenged by a virus of this nature. This virus is really one of the, I would say, so far, one of the hardest virus I can see, in terms of how this virus can easily move around the human population … Just be ready that it will be with us for a long time.”
She said that it has been “a very stressful period” for the healthcare sector in Singapore.
She added: “At NCID, we were provided with a small surge team, but honestly it’s grossly inadequate.
“So then we have to look at our partnering institutions, Tan Tock Seng Hospital just across the road, to give us the manpower enhancement, and soon very quickly, we realised it wasn’t enough.”
The entire nation is now engaged in the battle against the disease, she said.
“This is what we call whole of Government approach, where it is no longer just restricted to the healthcare sector, it is the whole of Government being activated with almost every ministry being involved in the entire fight against COVID-19.”
SINGAPORE: Singapore reported 752 new COVID-19 cases as of noon on Thursday (May 14), taking the country’s total to 26,098.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Thursday that 1,164 more patients have been discharged, a new daily high and the first time the number of discharged patients has crossed the 1,000 mark.
In all, 5,973 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities.
A total of 750 of the new cases are work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories, said MOH in its daily update.
MOH said it continues to pick up many more cases among work permit holders residing in dormitories, including in factory-converted dormitories, because of extensive testing in these premises.
There were no new imported cases or cases among work permit holders residing outside dormitories.
MOH reported on Thursday two new cases in the community. The first case is a 76-year-old Singaporean man who is part of a cluster at 63 Senoko Drive.
The other case is a 43-year-old permanent resident, who is part of a cluster at TTJ Design & Engineering and is a contact of Cases 10923, 12471, 15097 and 21384.
A new cluster was also identified at 2 Perumal Road.
There are currently 1,072 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving while 20 are in a critical condition in the intensive care unit.
A total of 19,032 are isolated and cared for at community facilities. These are people who have mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for COVID-19.
To date, 21 have died from complications due to COVID-19 infection. No deaths were reported on Thursday.
Mrs Teo explained that the large number of reported cases among migrant workers reflected the current approach of “aggressive testing”.
“Few countries have tested their migrant populations extensively; far fewer have undertaken to test all their migrant workers, as Singapore has,” she said.
SINGAPORE – Twice daily, recovering Covid-19 patients staying at Singapore Expo take to the floor for a mass exercise session.
A widely circulated video shows a healthcare worker leading patients in a dance workout at the Expo, said the Woodlands Health Campus (WHC) on Thursday (May 14).
The healthcare worker is seen dancing enthusiastically to an unidentified beat, despite being decked out in personal protective equipment. Dozens of foreign worker patients are seen following her lead.
A few other healthcare workers are also shown in the video, dancing along.
A WHC spokesman told The Straits Times on Thursday that its Expo healthcare team started a series of exercises and activities on Monday (May 11) to improve the well-being of patients.
These activities are meant to lift patients’ mood and help them remain active while recovering at the community care facility.
“The video shows one such mass exercise session, which lasts about 15 minutes. Sessions are conducted twice a day,” the spokesman said.
“So far the response and participation have been positive.”
No doubt, all businesses have been majorly impacted during the Covid-19 pandemic. It might be even direr for local business operators, most of whom run their enterprises independently through various e-commerce platforms amid the heightened social distancing measures.
Instead of rummaging through various websites, an initiative started by five local college students is encouraging Singaporeans to support businesses run by fellow countrymen. After crafting lines of code, the fruit of their labour is something called buylocal.sg, a cross-platform search aggregator that pulls in results from only local sellers.
The website is the first of its kind, the team declared. Buylocal.sg allows buyers to search across Carousell, Shopee and Qoo10 for items sold by Singaporean businesses, ensuring maximum visibility for struggling local sellers during a time when they need it the most.
More than 33 hours of fibre broadband disruption left M1 subscribers across the country dismayed — especially so in a time when going online is a necessity for work and play during the circuit breaker.
The disruption affected thousands of subscribers in various parts of Singapore since 4.30am on Tuesday (May 12) and their internet connectivity issues only ended around 2pm the next day. This, despite the telco posting that services had been restored earlier in the morning.
Screengrab / Facebook
The lengthy period of outage prompted the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) to launch investigations, assuring that strong enforcement action will be taken if they find any fault attributable to M1.
Now in hot water, the local telco wants to make amends by offering its affected subscribers a one-week rebate off their bill in June.
Lim Chu Kang Cemetery may be the resting place of many of Singapore’s dearly departed. But for one family fallen on hard times, the jungle surrounding the cemetery has been their home for the past three years.
Tok Adi (not his real name), whom the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Project Hills identified as a 54-year-old Singaporean, has been working as a gravedigger for about four years but struggles to support his family of three as his employer has allegedly not been paying him fairly.
Without a home to call their own, Tok Adi, his wife and their eight-year-old son resorted to living in a makeshift shack in a jungle near the cemetery cobbled together from discarded plywood, signboards, tarp and metal sheets.
SINGAPORE: The proposed set-up of partitions in a lorry that was seen in a widely circulated video is not “secure” and could “endanger” its occupants as well as other road users, said the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) on Thursday (May 14).
In response to queries from CNA, the authorities said that they were aware of a video showing the installation of partitions on a lorry, seemingly as a way to separate foreign workers into individual compartments.
The video was part of a demonstration video and proposal sent by the construction firm to MOM on Tuesday for consultation, the authorities said.
The video was taken at the workshop of the construction firm, and the proposed partitions set-up has not been put into use, said MOM and LTA.
In the video, workers are seen taking turns to alight a lorry by swinging open a partition.
“MOM and LTA have collectively assessed that any sudden movement while travelling on the roads might dislodge the partitions and endanger occupants as well as other road users,” they said.
MOM contacted the company on Wednesday and “clarified with them that the proposed set-up of the partitions in the rear of the lorry was not secure”.
“We have informed the company of our assessment and advised them to review its plan,” the authorities said.
MOM said it has issued specific guidelines on its website for firms to comply with, with regards to safe distancing while transporting the workers.
The new rules mean each lorry is now permitted to carry fewer workers than before.
“We urge companies to reach out to the authorities to seek necessary clarification on safe distancing measures for lorries,” said the authorities.
Screengrab of an online video by Shin Kai Construction demonstrating how the back of a lorry can be partitioned to transport foreign workers for safe distancing during the COVID-19 outbreak.
CONSTRUCTION FIRM APOLOGISES
The construction firm behind the video apologised on Thursday, saying that it was “surprised” at the amount of “interest in the video and comments from online netizens”.
The 1-minute clip was an internal demonstration video of the company’s “partitioned lorry arrangement”, said Shin Khai Construction in a Facebook post.
“While some comments are encouraging, we regret to hear that the video might have portrayed the way we treated our workers as inhumanely and without care. We wished to issue an apology on this,” it added.
With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting the construction industry, the company said it was trying to find solutions – the partitioned lorry arrangement being one of them.
“As we need to conform to the safe distancing rules, our lorry capacity was greatly reduced from 23 pax to 6 pax, which will be of great concern for our built environment,” said Shin Kai Construction.
“We were also advised to do more trips to ferry our workers if need to,” it added.
The company said that it is hoping to propose its design to the authorities so as to increase the lorry capacity to 12 people.
“This will help in reducing workers waiting time, delay in these event and other traffic issues.”
