Covid-19 Pandemic In Singapore


Book Description

The National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) is the result of many years in the planning, and it finally officially opened its doors in September 2019, just months before the entire world was tested by the COVID-19 pandemic. This book is the work of many people who represent an even larger pool of people from NCID, Singapore and the rest of the world in trying to understand and contain the SARS- CoV-2 virus. There are chapters on science, the public health response both locally and globally, as well as personal reflections from NCID and Tan Tock Seng Hospital staff and staff from other public healthcare institutions who were deployed to NCID which bring home the human impact of the pandemic. We are very grateful to all the authors for taking the time to put together their thoughtful chapters as well as the senior academics and public health leaders who have provided us with generous comments on the manuscript. We hope that the readers of the book will gain a better insight into the response to the virus from so many different perspectives. Although the pandemic has evolved far beyond the pages of this book globally, the lessons learned from the early days are still relevant. We hope that the chapters will be helpful as we review our experience of this pandemic and face the next emerging infectious disease in the years to come.This book provides a comprehensive look at many different aspects of response in Singapore to the pandemic in the crucial first several months, including clinical, laboratory, epidemiology, research, community engagement and the unprecedented challenge of outbreak involving migrant workers in dormitory settings. On a personal note, it has first-hand accounts of staff at the NCID who were at the forefront of battling COVID-19 in Singapore. It also gives a global perspective of the pandemic, together with insights into the unique Singapore experience of managing the pandemic. The Singapore response to the pandemic has been something which the global community has been very interested in and this book is the first to comprehensively describe that response from a number of different angles which will be useful to scientists, clinicians, public health professionals and policy makers.




Singapore's First Year of COVID-19


Book Description

This book addresses the question of what Singapore's COVID-19 pandemic response in the first year can tell us about the strengths and weaknesses of the Singapore model and what its prospects might be in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous post-pandemic world. As a concise, holistic, and critical documentation of the first year of COVID-19 in Singapore, the multi-disciplinary chapters in this book provide a broad-ranging analysis of an internationally admired model of governance severely tested by a global pandemic crisis whose end is still not in sight. The book focuses specifically on the interconnections among Singapore’s political economy, public health policies, immigration policies, and the elite and pragmatic system of state authoritarianism that, especially since the 1980s, has been at the heart of managing the tensions and contradictions of a nation-state that is also a global city, an important node in a network of goods, services, investments, wealth, people, ideas, and images, all moving rapidly. The chapters critically employ topics and concepts such as neoliberal globalization, authoritarian populism, moral panic, social stigmatization, heterotopia, spatial segregation, and others to make sense of a thoroughly complex situation.




Primary and Secondary Education During Covid-19


Book Description

This open access edited volume is a comparative effort to discern the short-term educational impact of the covid-19 pandemic on students, teachers and systems in Brazil, Chile, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. One of the first academic comparative studies of the educational impact of the pandemic, the book explains how the interruption of in person instruction and the variable efficacy of alternative forms of education caused learning loss and disengagement with learning, especially for disadvantaged students. Other direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic diminished the ability of families to support children and youth in their education. For students, as well as for teachers and school staff, these included the economic shocks experienced by families, in some cases leading to food insecurity and in many more causing stress and anxiety and impacting mental health. Opportunity to learn was also diminished by the shocks and trauma experienced by those with a close relative infected by the virus, and by the constrains on learning resulting from students having to learn at home, where the demands of schoolwork had to be negotiated with other family necessities, often sharing limited space. Furthermore, the prolonged stress caused by the uncertainty over the resolution of the pandemic and resulting from the knowledge that anyone could be infected and potentially lose their lives, created a traumatic context for many that undermined the necessary focus and dedication to schoolwork. These individual effects were reinforced by community effects, particularly for students and teachers living in communities where the multifaceted negative impacts resulting from the pandemic were pervasive. This is an open access book.




The East Asian Covid-19 Paradox


Book Description

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered the first global public health emergency since 1918, the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the greatest geopolitical tensions in decades. Global governance mechanisms failed. Yet, East Asian countries (with caveats) managed to control Covid-19 better than most other countries and to increase their cooperation toward economic integration, despite their position on the security frontline. What explains this East Asian Covid paradox in a region devoid of strong regional institutions? This Element argues that high levels of institutional preparation, social cohesion, and global strategic reinforcement in a context of situational convergence explain the results. It relies on high-level interviews and case studies across the region.




In this Together


Book Description




COVID-19 in Southeast Asia


Book Description

COVID-19 has presented huge challenges to governments, businesses, civil societies, and people from all walks of life, but its impact has been highly variegated, affecting society in multiple negative ways, with uneven geographical and socioeconomic patterns. The crisis revealed existing contradictions and inequalities in society, compelling us to question what it means to return to “normal” and what insights can be gleaned from Southeast Asia for thinking about a post-pandemic world. In this regard, this edited volume collects the informed views of an ensemble of social scientists – area studies, development studies, and legal scholars; anthropologists, architects, economists, geographers, planners, sociologists, and urbanists; representing academic institutions, activist and charitable organisations, policy and research institutes, and areas of professional practice – who recognise the necessity of critical commentary and engaged scholarship. These contributions represent a wide-ranging set of views, collectively producing a compilation of reflections on the following three themes in particular: (1) Urbanisation, digital infrastructures, economies, and the environment; (2) Migrants, (im)mobilities, and borders; and (3) Collective action, communities, and mutual action. Overall, this edited volume first aims to speak from a situated position in relevant debates to challenge knowledge about the pandemic that has assigned selective and inequitable visibility to issues, people, or places, or which through its inferential or interpretive capacity has worked to set social expectations or assign validity to certain interventions with a bearing on the pandemic’s course and the future it has foretold. Second, it aims to advance or renew understandings of social challenges, risks, or inequities that were already in place, and which, without further or better action, are to be features of our “post-pandemic world” as well. This volume also contributes to the ongoing efforts to de-centre and decolonise knowledge production. It endeavours to help secure a place within these debates for a region that was among the first outside of East Asia to be forced to contend with COVID-19 in a substantial way and which has evinced a marked and instructive diversity and dynamism in its fortunes.




Reopening K-12 Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic


Book Description

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges to the nation's K-12 education system. The rush to slow the spread of the virus led to closures of schools across the country, with little time to ensure continuity of instruction or to create a framework for deciding when and how to reopen schools. States, districts, and schools are now grappling with the complex and high-stakes questions of whether to reopen school buildings and how to operate them safely if they do reopen. These decisions need to be informed by the most up-to-date evidence about the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19; about the impacts of school closures on students and families; and about the complexities of operating school buildings as the pandemic persists. Reopening K-12 Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Prioritizing Health, Equity, and Communities provides guidance on the reopening and operation of elementary and secondary schools for the 2020-2021 school year. The recommendations of this report are designed to help districts and schools successfully navigate the complex decisions around reopening school buildings, keeping them open, and operating them safely.




Impact Of Covid-19 On Asian Economies And Policy Responses


Book Description

On March 12th 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spreading of the new virus, 2019-nCoV, a pandemic. In Asia, the virus, more commonly referred to as COVID-19, has been spreading since the end of December. To contain the public health threat, almost all countries enforced a variety of measures, including lockdowns, to minimize face-to-face human interactions between the infected and the susceptible.While these vigilant measures save lives, they also generate a substantial negative economic shock that immediately halts demand and significantly disrupts supply, global production value chain and trade. The consequences are dire — considerable decline in output, massive surge in unemployment, countless bankruptcy cases, and unrelentless worries over financial stability. The result, a worldwide economic setback, is more severe than that experienced during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009.Asia's experiences with COVID-19 precede that in the West. This fortuitous timing allows Asia to share its learnings drawn from experiences to benefit the world.The Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research's (ABFER) community has gathered a collection of insights to inform the public. Besides providing access to research on the pandemic conducted in Asia, these commentaries offer comprehensive information on the effects of the pandemic, the effectiveness of measures employed to contain it and the subsequent economic impacts from such implementation. With granular analyses of government policies and their associated economic rescue packages, these commentaries elucidate the hard trade-offs between public health protection and economic security. Finally, the commentaries address the broader impact of the pandemic on international trade, global value chains and society.




Learning from Singapore


Book Description

Learning from Singapore tells the inside story of the country’s journey in transforming its education system from a struggling one to one that is hailed internationally as effective and successful. It is a story not of the glory of international test results, but of the hard work and tenacity of a few generations of policy makers, practitioners and teacher trainers. Despite its success, Singapore continues to reform its education system, and is willing to deal with difficult issues and challenges of change. Citing Singapore's transformation, author Pak Tee Ng highlights how context and culture affect education policy formulation and implementation. Showing how difficult education reform can be when a system needs to negotiate between competing philosophies, significant trade-offs, or paradoxical positions, this book explores the successes and struggles of the Singapore system and examines its future direction and areas of tension. The book also explores how national education systems can be strengthened by embracing the creative tensions generated by paradoxes such as the co-existence of timely change and timeless constants, centralisation and decentralisation, meritocracy and compassion, and teaching less and learning more. Learning from Singapore brings to the world the learning from Singapore—what Singapore has learned from half a century of educational change—and encourages every education system to bring hope to and secure a future for the next generation.




Brand Singapore (Second Edition): Nation Branding After Lee Kuan Yew, in a Divisive World


Book Description

Without nation branding, there would be no Singapore. Reputation is precious. Top talent and hot money gravitate only to the most attractive, respected nations. For a country as small and as young as Singapore, its brand is its most valuable asset. Singapore’s stunning ascent from Third World to First World in a matter of 30 years was spearheaded by a concerted, closely-coordinated programme of nation branding. Brand Singapore helped to attract the investments, business, trade, tourism and talented human resources that are the lifeblood of a successful nation. Today, the city-state is known internationally as a dynamic, safe, corruption-free place to do business, a Garden City, and increasingly, a vibrant city of culture and the arts. In global surveys of quality of life, Singapore regularly tops the charts. How did Singapore create this country brand, cultivate and guard it, sell it to its “shareholders”, and make it known to the world? Drawing on two decades in the nation branding game, Koh Buck Song offers an illuminating inside look at – and candid critique of – a country brand that is as rich in resource as it is potent with promise. Since the first publication of this book in 2011, Singapore has celebrated its golden jubilee of independence, undergone a watershed general election and the death of founding father Lee Kuan Yew, and seen its nation brand rise and fall amid the disruptions of an increasingly divisive world (Brexit, Trump, China, etc). This timely second edition explores the implications of all these factors on Singapore’s future.