Singapore closes borders to all Chinese travellers to stem spread of coronavirus

South China Morning Post ^ | January 31, 2020 | by Kok Xinghui

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Singapore will close its borders to all new visitors from mainland China, including foreigners who have been there within the past 14 days, becoming the first Southeast Asian country to do so in a bid to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

The island nation has China as one of its biggest trading partners and is a popular destination for Chinese tourists. Figures from the Singapore Tourism Board showed that 248,000 travellers from the mainland entered Singapore last November, while 3.42 million mainland Chinese tourists visited in 2018.

The visa suspension will come into effect immediately so travellers can be informed in advance, while the travel restriction will start at 11.59pm on Saturday. The government did not say when these restrictions would be lifted.

Singapore also announced three new confirmed cases of the virus, bringing its total to 16. The new cases include one of the Singaporeans evacuated from Wuhan on January 30, a 47-year-old woman who travelled to the Chinese city with her family.

She did not have any symptoms when she boarded the flight but was found to have a fever during a medical screening at Changi Airport. She tested positive for the coronavirus on Friday.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

[entropy12]

Singapore is the best foreign country I have visited out of the nearly 40 countries I have traveled to. First, the food in restaurants is amazing and cheap, with Chinese & Indian & middle-east cuisine, the infra-structure at airport & cruise terminal & highways is world class, there is almost no street crime with posters declaring death sentences to drug dealers, I felt perfectly safe strolling on streets late at night, and any rabble rouser foreign worker is promptly deported never to be allowed back again.

[RayChuang88]

You're right about the food. By my late mom's estimation, Singapore is one of the few places outside of Hong Kong where you can get decent dim sum (well, besides the ex-pat communities here on the US West Coast).

[ncalburt]

Why is the WH letting these infected Chinese come here still .
Does someone need to die here?
Russia closed it borders yesterday .
The US the suckers of the world.

[Black Agnes]

I guess singapore isn’t worried about crashing their economy.

Isn’t that the excuse used for why we can’t possibly do the same?

[null and void]

Bring Out Your Dead

Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.

The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.

So far the false positive rate is 100%.

At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.

*sigh* Such is life, and death...

If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.

[fireman15]

My best friend has been in China for the last couple of weeks. He should be back in the next couple of days. He is suppose to help me cut down some tall firs on the back of our property next week. He smuggles biblical material into China. He has been caught on two previous occasions and let go after a couple of days, after receiving warnings not to do it again by the authorities. It feels like a dangerous game.