SINGAPORE: Singapore was one of the first countries in Asia to see COVID-19 cases back in January, when very little was known about the disease, and it was one of the first places where there was community spread.

Nine months on, the country has recorded more than 57,000 COVID-19 cases, but this is a fraction of the tens of millions of infections around the world.

So far, 28 people have died of COVID-19 in Singapore – one of the lowest mortality rates in the world. In the US, where there have been about 8 million cases, more than 200,000 people have died.

As of Saturday (Oct 17), 37 COVID-19 patients remain hospitalised in Singapore, with none in intensive care. More than 99 per cent of those infected have been discharged, while there are 41 in community care facilities.

READ: 64-year-old man is Singapore’s 28th COVID-19 fatality; first in three months

But it wasn’t always like this. Three National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) consultants told CNA how treatment of the novel coronavirus has evolved here and how NCID has kept the number of critical cases low.

The initial stages of the outbreak were fraught with uncertainty, said Dr Ray Lin Junhao, 37, an infectious disease consultant at Tan Tock Seng Hospital and NCID.

He was involved in the direct care of COVID-19 patients, including those who were critically ill. Dr Lin was also a co-investigator in several clinical trials that evaluated therapeutics for the disease.

“With the advances in research over the past few months, we now have a better idea of what treatment works and what doesn’t. Although the efficacy of the currently available treatment is modest, at least we are no longer groping in the dark,” said Dr Lin.

“CONSTANT STRUGGLE”

One of the differences between the COVID-19 pandemic and previous outbreaks has been the vast amount of information about the coronavirus on the Internet and social media, available to both doctors and the general public.

This has influenced the course of the current pandemic, he said. In the early days of the outbreak, reports of potential treatments for COVID-19 made it “tempting” to use them on the sickest patients, he added. 

“As a physician, it is in our nature to want to give some form of treatment to our patients, even if unproven, rather than to stand by passively and hope for the best … This was a constant struggle in the initial phase of the outbreak,” he said.

However, the potential harms of unproven therapy are real, such as in the case of hydroxychloroquine, he said.

The anti-malaria drug, which was endorsed by US President Donald Trump early in the pandemic, was said in small studies to be a potential treatment but proved during clinical trials to have little benefit. The World Health Organization (WHO) has since halted trials of the drug. 

UPDATED MAP: All the places that COVID-19 community cases visited while they were infectious

READ: COVID-19: Singapore, Hong Kong reach in-principle agreement to establish bilateral air travel bubble

Dr Mucheli Sharavan Sadasiv, 37, said that there was a feeling of helplessness in the early days, because of the uncertainty due to all the unknowns.

“I think it’s normal to feel that way. Being exhausted physically and mentally did not help as well. As time has gone by, we have learnt so much more about the illness and that helps us with our work in taking care of patients,” said the infectious diseases physician, who has been involved in the implementation of the convalescent plasma programme for COVID-19 in Singapore. 

For example, one of the most effective ways of keeping patients alive in the early days was flipping them around to lie prone – or on their front – instead of on their backs when they were on ventilators. 

Prone-position ventilation was one of the few early interventions that significantly helped the patients in the intensive care unit (ICU), said Dr Lin. 

“These patients were so severely affected by COVID-19 that even with the maximum support from the ventilator, we were unable to achieve adequate oxygenation.” 

But the simple manoeuvre helped patients breathe easier and absorb oxygen better, buying time for the body to recover as there was no effective therapy at that point in the outbreak.

READ: COVID-19 pandemic creates ‘surge’ of flawed research

EARLY INTERVENTION

Other aspects have become clearer as well, for example, knowing which patients might get sick, and those who might need closer attention, the doctors said.

“I have much more confidence in counselling patients on their condition now,” said Dr Lee Tau Hong, 39.

“Now, with the knowledge we have, we are able to allay patient fears and the doubts that we have with regard to this disease.”

That knowledge has led to clear classification guidelines for patients at higher risk of severe disease, as well as treatment guidelines, drafted by the national COVID-19 therapeutic workgroup lead by Dr Shawn Vasoo, clinical director of NCID.  

As vice-chair of the Chapter of Infectious Disease Physicians, College of Physicians Singapore, Dr Lee provided comments during the drafting of the interim treatment guidelines. He also treated COVID-19 patients, drafted clinical workflows and was a co-investigator in several research publications.

For instance, it is now known that older patients, and those with underlying conditions such as heart disease or diabetes, as well as those who are obese, are at higher risk of developing severe disease.

READ: Britain rations remdesivir as COVID-19 hospitalisations rise

Dr Lee said that early diagnosis and identification of patients at risk of developing severe disease were some of the most important factors that have helped patients. For severe cases, medicines such as remdesivir and dexamethasone have proven effective.

NCID collaborated with Gilead and the United States’ National Institutes of Health for the remdesivir clinical trials.

Explaining how the drugs work, Dr Lee said that remdesivir is an anti-viral agent that acts directly on the SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – thus reducing the harmful effects of the disease. 

Dexamethasone, a commonly used corticosteroid, helps to dampen inflammation, as patients can develop severe disease due to overwhelming inflammation in the body that is triggered by the viral infection.

READ: NCID guidelines recommend use of dexamethasone for patients with ‘severe’ COVID-19

READ: Fauci says ‘reasonably good chance’ Regeneron antibody therapy helped Trump

Dr Lin said he noticed that a good number of patients at NCID improved more rapidly on remdesivir when it was trialled there. It shortened the average length of stay in the ICU for patients on the study.

“Eventually, we were proven right with the official release of the trial results, which showed remdesivir to be the first drug with proven efficacy against SARS-CoV-2,” he said.

Mr Trump, who contracted COVID-19 more than two weeks ago, was treated with both drugs as well as an antibody cocktail developed by US biotechnology company Regeneron. Antibodies are proteins produced by the body to fight against diseases.

It has been reported that the neutralising antibodies were developed by the US drug company with blood samples from three NCID patients who recovered from COVID-19. 

Associate Professor David Lye, senior consultant and director of NCID’s Infectious Disease Research and Training Office said the centre had responded to a request for collaboration from Regeneron, with no claim of intellectual property right. 

As part of the collaboration, NCID was asked to recruit up to 20 patients who had recovered from COVID-19, to collect samples. After obtaining patients’ informed consent, it recruited five patients and were told by Regeneron that they had enough samples. 

“They eventually used the samples from three of our five patients, as the starting point for research using their technology to develop their monoclonal antibodies,” he said.

Monoclonal antibodies are based on natural antibodies, but are created in laboratories and can be mass produced.

Dr Lee said that he had a patient who had an uncomplicated infection but was very grateful and wanted to contribute in some way. After he recovered, he volunteered to donate his plasma, which contain antibodies against the virus.

“There were many other patients who agreed to participate in clinical trials. They were randomly assigned to be given a placebo or remdesivir … I wish to take the opportunity to thank our patients,” he said.

NCID’s interim treatment guidelines state that further data is required for interferon beta-based treatments and convalescent plasma, among others.

“Although we already have some answers, we still await the results of some important trials that are ongoing,” said Dr Sadasiv.

A “HUMBLING EXPERIENCE”

When asked why Singapore has seen low rates of fatalities and severe cases, the doctors said that one of the main reasons was that many of the patients were young and healthy, as the majority of the cases in Singapore were migrant workers.

Early access to medical care and good supportive treatment have been important factors as well.

“The health system (has not been) overwhelmed by too many sick cases, unlike in some other countries with higher mortality,” said Dr Sadasiv. “I think this has allowed us to be able to deal with critically ill patients better.”

Dr Lin said the good public health response to contain community spread in the early part of the outbreak prevented hospitals in Singapore from being overwhelmed.

“This also bought us much needed time to better understand the virus, the disease and for an effective treatment to emerge,” he said.

READ: Ebola drug remdesivir used to treat COVID-19 patients in Singapore as part of clinical trials

He added that research on COVID-19 in Singapore was achieved at a speed and with a level of coordination that was unprecedented, and this data and evidence helped guide the assessment and treatment of patients.

This information was then disseminated to the doctors on the ground by the Health Ministry and NCID.

“By the time the cases surged, we knew enough about the disease to be able to identify patients who were at risk of complications and to allocate the necessary resources and treatment needed to improve their outcomes,” he said.

Dr Sadasiv said that the whole process has been a humbling experience, as different departments and agencies worked together to tackle the pandemic.

“It has taught me to embrace uncertainty and to know our limitations. It was a challenge to keep up to pace with the expanding information and the many changes to workflows and processes. I hope I’ve learnt to have more gratitude too,” he said.

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SINGAPORE: Without a shadow of a doubt, every time my Peranakan family and circle of friends have a social gathering, food is the main attraction.

When you think Peranakan culture, your mind immediate wanders to the sights and smells of nyonya cuisine.

For the uninitiated, nyonya is the term for female Peranakans – when the women in the household took pride in pounding over 10 different spices to make rempah, a paste that eventually becomes garang assam (lemon grass fish) or sambal udang (spicy prawns) depending on the exact mixture, and set the long dinner table (tok panjang) for the family with dishes upon dishes, cooked with love over many hours slaving over a stove.

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

Food is such a way of our life that you hardly ever hear a Jati (what we call a true, blue Peranakan) say she is on diet when we meet up for a meal.

Peranakans simply drip with descriptive words about food: Shiok lah! Sedap lah! 

READ: Has the ‘soul’ gone out of modern Peranakans?

READ: Commentary: I am Peranakan not Chinese

These are expressions to register our heartfelt satisfaction with an array of Peranakan dishes, which have edged their way into mainstream Singapore cuisine, as much as those words have become standard phrases uttered by Singaporeans enjoying a good meal.

Whether ayam buah keluak, itek Tim, itek sio, babi pongteh or chap chye, all accompanied by a dollop of freshly pounded sambal belachan with a squeeze of lime to provide that extra oomph, there are fewer things that get Peranakans into a frenzy as a discussion rating Baba restaurants in Singapore.

Most of the time, Peranakans swear the best dishes are found in the homes of doting grandmothers who take painstaking efforts to wash, dry, cut open and pound the humble buak keluak – the centrepice of the most famous nyonya dish, whose unique family recipe is most Peranakans’ secret pride and joy.

ARE YOU PERANAKAN IF YOU CAN’T FOOD PERANAKAN MAKAN?

While most Peranakans love to eat, especially to eat our heritage dishes, however, does it necessarily follow that all Peranakans can cook them?

I find this standard of judging ourselves somewhat harsh and reductive of great cultures with a long history. 

Do we expect that all Hainanese people must know how to cook chicken rice? That all Malays must know how to make rendang? That all Indians must know how to cook rasum? Do all Scottish people know how to make haggis?

The art of enjoying eating a particular dish is not synonymous with a mastery over cooking.

We cannot assume that all Peranakans look to cook. In fact, we must also not assume that all Peranakans will love to eat ayam buah keluak, just as we cannot assume that all Malays will love rendang, Indians, rasum, or the Hainannese, chicken rice. I know for sure, that not all Scots like their haggis.

READ: The slow death of Peranakan cuisine? Or is authenticity overrated?

READ: Commentary: I am Eurasian and Singaporean – same same

However, you may be the richer for it to be able to tell apart your lengkuas (blue ginger) from your bunga kantan (torch ginger flower) and how to magically bring the various ingredients together in such a way that it will produce a truly delectable dish that gets lips smacking and people talking about it long after the dish has been devoured.

A CULTURE BASED ON GATHERING

Peranakans in Singapore are very fortunate. Our island is small enough to congregate easily with fellow Peranakans. We have the opportunities to get together fairly frequently to celebrate our culture and heritage.

We can practice some of our many customs, or talk about it so that it remains in the forefront of our memory. No doubt us seniors live in the hope that more Anak Peranakan (our Peranakan youths) want to participate and be inspired to carry on our traditions before we popped our clogs.

But if you ask me what images are conjured up in my mind when someone asks me what being Peranakan is like, I would point to our gatherings – for our Malam Joget, our Peranakan Ball, or Chakap Chakap Baba at the Peranakan Association of Singapore.

The first is the occasional flamboyant dress-up evening in colourful, resplendent Peranakan outfits with bling-bling jewellery to joget or dance the night away. You might be amused to know that our Babas (Peranakan men), are permitted to happily flaunt their style too – in shiny brooches, glittering shirts and sarongs.

KEEPING THE LINGO ALIVE

The other part of being Peranakan is language. To chakap is to speak. Chakap Chakap Baba is our attempt to keep our unique Peranakan patois alive by making conversations in our own language.

In my growing-up years, we were not compelled to study Mandarin, so the majority of us studied Malay in school which is the parent language of our patois, incorporated with Hokkien words.

Of course, much has been lost over the years but we soldier on. We run language classes to recall our special lingo and sing-song lilt.

These various activities make us an inclusive group to some degree. It’s this inclusiveness which acts as a tremendous advantage to keep our culture strong and alive.

The birth of the Peranakan Museum, Baba House and other private museums, not to mention the media influence of The Little Nonya series, all help to showcase a culture that used to be quietly practised in the privacy of homes.

FOOD IS A HUGE PART OF OUR CULTURE BUT NOT THE ONLY THING

To suggest that a Peranakan who can’t cook ayam buah keluak cannot be considered a Peranakan is far too sweeping in my opinion. Cooking is only one aspect of a layered heritage and culture.

In the olden days, girls generally did not go to school or out to work. Learning to cook, embroider and make a home were her priorities.

These days, young women have to hold a full-time job, and be wife and mother. Naturally, cooking has to take a backseat.

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Culture has to evolve with the times. If we’re too rigid, set too many rules, enforce irrelevant customs, we will scare away the young. Then they will reject our heritage. That is when all is lost.

THE CHEATER’S WAY OF MAKING AN EXCELLENT AYAM BUAK KELUAK

Having said all that, let me end with a tip to make an excellent ayam buah keluak like mothers used to make in this modern age without the old hassle.

This dish is the caviar of Peranakan cuisine. It’s an acquired taste. The richness of its sauce comes from the buah keluak nut which grows on a kepayang tree, now a heritage tree in Singapore. 

It has a hard, grooved shell outside and the inside is soft and black. However, it is laced with hydrogen cyanide so be very aware. Most of the work involved is preparing the fruit to remove the poison.

Growers plucked the nuts and bury them in ash for months. Then they are cleaned, ready for use. But the cook still has to soak the nuts for days before use, scrub them down and change the water each day.

Before you cook it with your chicken pieces, you have to crack each nut on its lip, scrape out the black inside, pound it with some gula Melaka, then re-insert it back into the nut. The process is time-consuming.

The cheater’s way is a modern development. Nowadays growers market the nuts, already taken out of its shell. So, what you get is a clean black fruit.

You can buy these ready-to-be-cooked nuts at Tekka Market and Geylang Serai. No more hard work and messing about cleaning and scrubbing the shell.

You pound five or six of these and mix the paste with your chicken pieces. I find that it does not compromise the taste at all.

But hardliners still prefer the sauce with the nuts still in their shell. 

When eating they may insist on using a special spoon to dig out the black insides and understandably so. This worship of the fruit is a practice well shared by Malays and Indonesians who use this nut to make rawon sauce. 

The right measure of fresh chillies, candlenuts, asam and coconut milk will turn this odd-looking nut into one of the most unique and mouth-watering dishes in Peranakan cuisine.

I hope this cheat will encourage young Peranakans and aspiring cooks to try their hand at making the dish.

But don’t beat yourself up if you’re a struggling Peranakan unable to cook ayam buak keluak. And be nice to the nyonya bahru (young Peranakan) who might try their hand at it but can’t whip up a dish as good as nenek’s (grandma).

Josephine Chia is author of many books, most famously Kampong Spirit: Gotong Royong, Goodbye My Kampong and the children’s edition, Growing Up in Kampong Potong Pasir, and most recently, Big Tree in a Small Pot.

SINGAPORE: The issue of aircraft noise from Republic of Singapore Air Force aircraft flying over HDB estates has reared its head again.

Defence Minister Dr Ng Eng Hen responded to a question raised in Parliament by Potong Pasir Member of Parliament Sitoh Yih Pin, who asked if the RSAF would consider reducing the number of early morning training sessions of military aircraft near residential areas, given more residents work from home.

Responding in writing, Dr Ng explained the RSAF is already taking measures to reduce its noise footprint, with half of its flying training carried out with aircraft detachments based overseas in countries like Australia, France and the United States.

Locally, these measures include increased use of flight simulators and the use of overwater training areas for training, with efforts to avoid flying over Singapore except when unavoidable, such as during take-off, landing and the transit to the RSAF’s designated training areas.

The RSAF also clusters its sorties from Paya Lebar and Tengah Airbases as much as possible. This is to ensure the take-off cycle, where noise is loudest because the aircraft has to use higher power settings to accelerate, is kept as short as possible.

However, he stressed that while “we recognise the inconvenience and disruption to residents here”, RSAF pilots need to train adequately to maintain their skills and not let their capabilities degrade, noting that “it is critical for Singapore’s survival to maintain a capable and operationally-ready RSAF”.

NOISE AND SPACE-STARVED SINGAPORE

Aircraft noise affecting nearby residential areas is a perennial bugbear for most air forces in developed countries. Unfortunately, in land-scarce Singapore, the issue is further supercharged by the proximity of our airbases to high-density residential areas.

The problem would be most acute at HDB estates like Sengkang and Punggol, which lie directly under the flightpath of RSAF fighter jets taking off from Paya Lebar Airbase.

Aircraft typically make a sharp 180 degree turn while climbing to avoid Malaysian airspace, which as Dr Ng noted in his reply, is a mere 6km away from the northern end of Paya Lebar’s runway.

Since the start of measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, more Singaporeans had to work from home. Singapore is more exposed to the noise compared to before when they would more likely to be at their offices and other workplaces further away from the flightpath when RSAF jets are flying.

READ: SAF will ‘comprehensively relook’ how it operates, trains and works amid COVID-19 pandemic

READ: Some NSmen to be swabbed for COVID-19 from October, new methods for mass testing may be used

It can be quite tough if you are in a Zoom meeting which starts at the same time as an aircraft’s take-off cycle. A typical air force take-off cycle may take up to 15 minutes, involving anywhere from two to eight aircraft, with one taking off every two to three minutes.  

Dr Ng added that the RSAF made changes to flying activities considering more people are home. These include keeping the level of local flying activities to the minimum needed to maintain operational readiness, and spread the flights across the week and on selected weekends.

This is in addition to the RSAF adjusting its training tempo to accommodate sensitive periods, such as when national school examinations are held where he said that the frequency of flights will be reduced and night flying activities will end earlier.

MILITARY TRAINING ON HOLD

Like many other sectors, militaries have also been affected by the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to being drafted to assist in pandemic response like the SAF has, they have seen training activities curtailed or cancelled altogether, with potential knock-on impact on operational readiness.

A good example of this is this year’s iteration of the multinational Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise in Hawaii. The biennial exercise is usually held in June but was pushed back to August this year.

Instead of the typical naval, air and land exercise involving as many as 30 nations, 50 vessels and 25,000 personnel from around the Pacific Rim participating, this year’s event saw only 10 countries, 23 vessels and 5,300 personnel take part and only consisting of an at-sea phase, with barely any face-to-face interaction among the various national delegations.

Similarly, the RSAF has seen two of its biggest overseas multilateral air combat exercises cancelled for the first time in their over 20-year history due to the pandemic. 

This includes the 2,000-strong annual air combat Exercise Cope Tiger with the Royal Thai Air Force and the United States military in Thailand, and the biennial, large-force employment multinational Exercise Pitch Black in northern Australia.

READ: Commentary: The road to getting the F-35s up and ready for Singapore

READ: Commentary: Singapore Airshow in a COVID-19 outbreak – smaller but not quite

Also cancelled was an RSAF exercise involving its Peace Carvin V training detachment in Idaho earlier this year. 

A US-based contractor was scheduled to provide adversary support for the event, which would have seen the contractor’s own aircraft act as the “bad guys” flying an advanced enemy aircraft, to provide a realistic threat vector against Singapore’s Boeing F-15SG fighter jets in an advanced air combat setting.

The cancellations mean valuable opportunities for RSAF pilots to accrue critical training hours in less restrictive and confined airspace and in realistic training exercises have been lost.

The loss in flying hours at these overseas exercises must be made up elsewhere, given that pilots will need a certain number of flying hours each month to maintain proficiency.

While some can be accrued flying in full motion simulators that come close to replicating actual flight time, this cannot replace the need for pilots to spend actual time flying aircraft.

Even the best flight simulators are unable to provide the stress of life-threatening situations, unprecedented combinations of events, and the potential life-changing decision making that are part and parcel of live-flying.

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

In his reply, Dr Ng cited the events of 1941 to 1942 to remind Parliament of the importance of having an air force able to dominate the air during a battle.

There are many reasons behind how a smaller, relatively lightly equipped Japanese force was able to advance more than 500km and capture Singapore from the British a mere 70 days after landing in Kota Bharu, but a crucial factor behind their stunning victory was Japanese dominance of the air.

While it was true that the Brewster Buffalo fighters deployed by the Commonwealth forces were markedly inferior to their Japanese counterparts, the Commonwealth pilots were also poorly trained. This left them unable to exploit whatever precious little performance advantages their mounts had over their adversaries.

This meant that in the final weeks of the battle for Singapore, Japanese bombers had a virtual free hand to rain death and destruction on the ground below, unchallenged by the British Royal Air Force, which had already been thoroughly defeated by then.

The effect of this lack of training was underscored by Finnish pilots a few years later, who with better training and more experience, held their own in combat against a vastly numerically superior Soviet Air Force while flying essentially the same Buffalo fighters.

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These are indeed unusual and trying times, with massive disruptions to all walks of life due to the pandemic. 

People, already frazzled by a new normal that is anything but and are understandably frustrated by yet another disruption to their work life. The noise of planes flying overhead can trigger these frustrations.

But perhaps the next time you hear the roar of a jet or the whirring of helicopters, think about how these men and women need their training. 

And in tiny Singapore, this is a small sacrifice we need to make in order to have a well-oiled military machine.

Mike Yeo is a defence journalist and author who writes for Defense News and the Australian Defence Business Review. He is the author of Desperate Sunset: Japan’s Kamikazes against Allied Ships, 1944-45 and is currently writing a book about the air war over Malaya and Singapore. 

SINGAPORE: The new Pasir Panjang Park, scheduled to open in phases from 2021, will include features that allow visitors to experience the natural and maritime history of the area, said the National Parks Board (NParks) in a media release on Saturday (Oct 17).

The park, stretching from West Coast Park to Labrador Nature Reserve, is part of the Greater Southern Waterfront.

Pasir Panjang, which means long sand in Malay, used to be a long stretch of sandy beach. The area was rapidly developed from the 1970s through land reclamation and the building of Pasir Panjang Terminal.

READ: New attractions, housing and office spaces to be developed in Greater Southern Waterfront

In designing the new park, NParks held discussions with about 170 stakeholders, including the area’s residents and interest groups, between Jan 18 and May 31. 

The community took pride in Pasir Panjang’s rich history and wanted that to be featured in the park, said NParks.

“Future visitors will be brought down a Pasir Panjang memory lane, through incidental encounters with purposefully curated artefacts and programmes by the community, for the community,” the agency said.

These would include port items donated by PSA which would be placed in selected locations in the park.

READ: IN FOCUS: How urbanised Singapore is learning to live with its wildlife

“The stakeholders also had a strong preference for self-guided walks, preferring to hear about life in the past through other people’s perspectives and stories, rather than just historical facts about the area,” said NParks.

The community will also play an active role in the curation and programming efforts behind the Pasir Panjang story.

“Heritage boards and a heritage gallery will feature contributions of old photos by members of the public, enabling the community to tell the story of Pasir Panjang, thereby encouraging further contribution and sharing,” NParks said.

MORE NATURAL ELEMENTS

Three-quarters of the stakeholders also said that the park’s main feature should focus on natural elements, with less man-made materials.

Structures in the park such as public toilets will have green roofs to “soften the look” of the man-made structures, NParks said.

Reminiscent of the area’s sandy coastline prior to development, the landscaping will include plots of sand amid coastal vegetation.

READ: Singapore to plant 1 million trees, develop more gardens and parks by 2030

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This would be reintroduced in the exact location of the old beach coastline along the old concrete railing beside the canal, NParks said.

“The restored coastal vegetation at Pasir Panjang Park not only strengthens the recreational link between West Coast Park and the southern waterfront, it will also serve as a buffer for Labrador Nature Reserve by providing the public with an alternative node to connect with nature,” it added.

There will also be a nature playgarden to encourage free play and sensory discovery among children, NParks said.

The first section of Pasir Panjang Park – from Pasir Panjang MRT to Jalan Pelepah residential estate – is scheduled to open in 2021.