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Opinion
Rachel Rosenthal


SINGAPORE'S TRAVELERS FACE OMICRON CHAOS

Separation threatens parents and children, total strangers share quarantine
rooms, and hospital bills are climbing. The financial hub’s reputation for
pandemic management is taking a beating.

Enter at your own risk.

Photographer: Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty

By

Rachel Rosenthal

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December 23, 2021, 12:14 AM EST


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Rachel Rosenthal is an editor with Bloomberg Opinion. Previously, she was a
markets reporter and editor at the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong.
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On Wednesday, Singapore announced new travel restrictions to manage the spread
of omicron. The latest move comes as the government’s approach to pandemic
management, once strict and orderly, has become increasingly inconsistent and
chaotic.

Residents who have returned this month from travel abroad are describing
situations where they have been forced from their homes, ordered to share
quarantine facilities with complete strangers, told to hand their unsupervised
children off to authorities, and urged to abandon their pets. Some now face
hefty hospital bills.




This treatment is a far cry from what travelers expected of the quarantine-free
program for vaccinated passengers from countries including the U.S., U.K.,
France, South Korea and India that had been announced with great fanfare this
fall. The setback will dent Singapore’s status as a smoothly functioning
financial center.


More from
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Here are some residents’ recent stories from quarantine, which can last
almost three weeks:

A European national tested positive for Covid and began self-isolating at home.
Two days later, he received a call that authorities suspected he had omicron and
an ambulance would be coming to pick him up. He was still watching Netflix,
bare-chested and in shorts, when a pair of medical workers arrived at his home
in full protective gear, wearing gowns, face shields, masks and goggles. He
barely had time to shove his devices, chargers and clothing into a bag,
forgetting his toothbrush, before getting whisked into a van without air
conditioning. When he arrived at the quarantine hotel, he was told that he would
be sharing a room with a stranger from a different flight. He was never
presented with an official test result.


A room shared in quarantine, between total strangers who arrived on different
flights.
Bloomberg

His wife said authorities have tried several times to take their child, who is
under 10 and also tested positive, to a hospital alone or to an individual hotel
room. She has refused to comply, acknowledging that her decision could mean
fines or imprisonment. “The thought that you’re in your home and you have to
pack and leave? In this country? I don’t have the right to refuse to be
hospitalized,” she said.

A British citizen tested positive after returning from the U.K. She received
dozens of calls and WhatsApp messages from several different people at the
Ministry of Health, each giving conflicting information about what her next
steps should be. Some said she could isolate at home, while others said she
would have to move into quarantine. When she eventually was picked up by an
ambulance, authorities wouldn’t tell her husband where they were taking her.

After arriving at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, a hospital, she
was shuttled into a room, where she sat alone for hours. She alerted the staff
that she hadn’t had dinner and was given three slices of white bread and butter.
It wasn’t until reading a local newspaper report the next day that she found out
she had tested positive for omicron. Despite having bought travel insurance,
she’s now on the hook for thousands of dollars in hospital bills.



Her husband, who tested positive, was also taken to NCID and then transferred to
a quarantine hotel. When they struggled to make arrangements for care of their
two dogs and cat during their 10-day absence, authorities said the couple
would have to “find a solution.” 



A Singaporean who lives and works in the U.S. was returning home for the first
time in four years. He tested negative upon arrival, and started going out to
meet friends and family for meals. The next day, he got a call that he had been
identified as a close contact of someone who had tested positive for omicron on
his flight. He was picked up by an ambulance the following day.

This traveler says he’s confused about what qualifies as “close,” given that he
had been sitting in business class, far from others on the plane. His last
communication from Singapore Airlines Ltd. before boarding doesn’t specify,
leaving passengers guessing whether whole planes will be put into quarantine if
one person tests positive, regardless of individual test results. Most of his
trip will now be spent in quarantine. “I would not have come back if I knew this
would happen,” he said. Other travelers, he says, have returned to attend
weddings and funerals, only to miss them entirely.



After introducing the latest travel curbs, the Ministry of Health said, “Our
border measures will help buy us time to study and understand the omicron
variant, and to strengthen our defenses, including enhancing our healthcare
capacity and getting more people vaccinated and boosted.”



The good news is that we are starting to learn more about omicron. Researchers
suggest that, despite its high degree of infectiousness, this strain may be less
severe than delta. But even when there was little information about the variant,
we knew that one would arrive. The truth is, you don’t need to have all the
facts to prepare for an emergency.



Strict rules are core to Singapore’s style of governance: Most everyone who
lives here or visits accepts that. The trouble is combining stringent
regulations with haphazard communication and high stakes for noncompliance. “If
I had been mentally prepared, I wouldn’t have suffered half as much as I did,”
the Briton told me.



Some people I spoke with are now planning to leave Singapore for good. Expats
will come and go. The problem for the government isn’t a few disrupted Christmas
holidays, but rebuilding trust in regional business travel, particularly among
employment-pass holders who aren’t guaranteed re-entry. Early in the pandemic,
many expat families were split up for months because one parent had been
traveling abroad when Singapore closed its borders. Who will get on a plane and
chance that outcome today? What business will want to foot the bill for an
employee’s indeterminate hotel stay if borders shut suddenly? Singapore may be
proudly risk averse, but it seems all too willing to gamble its carefully
managed reputation away.

More From Other Writers at Bloomberg Opinion:

 * Survival Tips for Hong Kong’s 21-Day Covid Quarantine: Shuli Ren
 * A Singapore Transplant Roams Mask-Free in the U.S.: Daniel Moss
 * China Faces an Even Bigger Omicron Challenge: Raphael and Fazeli

Want more Bloomberg Opinion? Terminal readers head to OPIN <GO>. Web readers
click here.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or
Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Rachel Rosenthal at rrosenthal21@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Patrick McDowell at pmcdowell10@bloomberg.net



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Rachel Rosenthal is an editor with Bloomberg Opinion. Previously, she was a
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