The world has coughed and Singapore has always caught bugs three times

Singapore: Whether it’s Spanish, Asian or Hong Kong, the flu pandemic was sacrificed here-the first hard migrant worker raid from India. (The sound is familiar).

An infectious disease that spreads rapidly among migrant workers. Concealment concealment. A wave of infections is occurring one after another, and the number of cases reaches a new peak every day.

This may sound like Covid-19 (Coronavirus), but in Singapore, where a virus called the “Spanish flu” was spread in 1918, a century ago, in Singapore, where the virus remained widespread. happened.

Today’s coronavirus is neither the first pandemic to reach the Singapore coast nor the most deadly.

Most Singaporeans remember the 2003 Thurs outbreak that killed 33 people here, or the 2009 H1N1 virus that infected 415,000 people in the Republic in nine months.

The three influenza pandemics of the 20th century are not very well known. There are the 1957 “Asian Flu” that killed 1.1 to 2 million people worldwide and the 1968 “Hong Kong Flu” which killed 1 million people.

But first of all, the Spanish cold of 1918 was prevalent and was often called the “mother of all pandemics”.

About 500 million people (one-third of the world’s population at the time) are infected, and the death toll is conservatively estimated at 40 million, but can reach 100 million.

All three in turn swept Singapore in turn.

“We are very pleased to announce that the University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH) has been advising Associate Professor Vernon Lee. “The definition of a pandemic is the global spread of sudden illness, and the general lack of prior immunity that is characteristic of a pandemic leaves the majority of the population vulnerable to the disease.

“Every time we experience a pandemic, we always try to learn from these previous episodes to see the best practices we can incorporate. For example, a good surveillance and detection system is very important. I know from experience that in order to deal with an illness you must be able to know where the illness is.

“It’s also important to make the information available to the public so they can be educated about what to do and they can also empower them to take action on their own. is.”

Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang, who leads the SSHSPH Infectious Diseases Program, said: “There have been widespread similarities between these pandemics because there has been no significant change in human behavior over the past century, largely despite socio-political or technological conditions. And medical capabilities have changed significantly. It was. “

All pandemics are due to the massive movements of people that have dramatically accelerated over the last two decades, all causing undue death and suffering because the medical system is overwhelmed each time.

Physical distance demonstrates the most common intervention to delay the spread of each pandemic, from school closures to border closures both in 1918 and 1957 in Singapore.

While learning from past pandemics is beneficial, Professor Hvid warned that comparing Covid-19 to earlier outbreaks is “a superficial analogy that should not be a policy or intervention decision at this time”. I am.

But he adds: “After a pandemic-due to the end of the pandemic-Public health and preparedness for a pandemic should always be properly funded, and global cooperation against future outbreaks is our responsibility. Reach is the ideal to work harder. “

1918: “Flying Like”

In June 1918, the first upset of the “Mysterious Epidemic” was heard in Singapore. It is said to be from Spain. Reportedly “irregularity of the weather”. Locals called it the “bad wind” caused by the evil spirits.

So the 1918 flu pandemic began. This is a catastrophic epidemiological event, and it should be worth paying the same attention to the events that directly follow it, those given to World War I.

“But until recently, the pandemic, which neither the president nor the peasants escaped compared to the literature generated by the First World War, was largely a marginal subject until recently,” Liew, a researcher of cultural studies Kai Khiun is a Terribly Severe Though Mercifully Short, a flu in Malaya, England.

The pandemic struck Malaya with two waves. The first calm waves appeared in June and July 1918, followed by the second deadly wave in October and November. The region escaped the third wave in early 1919 in temperate countries.

It is difficult to calculate the number of people who have died of this virus in Singapore. The 844 flu deaths recorded that year are considered to be a poor estimate. Death during the first wave was initially mistaken for malaria.

A 2007 paper, Influenza Pandemic City Singapore, written by Professor Lee and six other experts estimated that influenza killed at least 2,870 people in Singapore in 1918, based on excess mortality. doing.

A retrospective exhibition at the Malaya Tribune in 1919 explains that in some parts of Malaya, people were dead “like a fly in a house or hospital, not a few on the roadside.” Some people may be fine in the morning and dead by the evening.

The clinic was overwhelming. Healthcare workers were at high risk. Singapore General Hospital had a disability when 12 out of 19 nurses were ill at the same time.

Unlike Covid-19, which is most vulnerable to the elderly and those with existing medical conditions, influenza mortality in 1918 was particularly high in young adults and young children.

Nevertheless, there are echoes found in today’s pandemics.

Dr. Liu points out that in July 1918, a concerned reader wrote: Straits Times He accused local authorities of trying to keep the case secret about the occurrence of meningitis in the United States.

China is currently being criticized by observers for hiding the extent of the first coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan. It was suggested that it was the U.S. military that brought the virus to Wuhan, which, in turn, had runaway in the United States.

But what the 1918 and today pandemics share is that they have a significant impact on the population of migrant workers, at least in the context of Singapore or Malay.

“The core analogy is that the most bacteriologically vulnerable segment is also the most socially and economically marginalized segment,” Liew told Insight. “In both cases, there is a similar explanation of poor health resulting from overcrowding, transient socially isolated communities.”

In 1918, all local groups were hit hard, but immigrant workers from India suffered disproportionately, and the population of Tamil migrants Negeri Sembilan increased more than double the mortality rate. I recorded it.

Of the more than 6,000 Covid-19 cases in Singapore, more than 4,000 have been associated with foreign worker dormitory clusters. A single dormitory S11 accounts for more than one-fifth of cases nationwide.

In his paper, Dr. Liew cites a rare direct explanation from a Tamil miner who was infected with the 1918 flu, which was translated by The Times Of Malaya.

The victim remembered that the police had taken him to a place with “hundreds of people as bad as me”. He was given brandy and had a hallucination about his homeland. Upon waking up, he realized that “in the room of the dead, waiting for the burial, the clerk thought I was dead and took me to the morgue.”

The plague has revealed an unsanitary and overcrowded condition in which these workers live, but both scientific experts and the media opinion alike have infected some races with the virus more than others. Concludes that it is easy to do and caused the unfortunate racialization of the disease-thus shifting responsibility to the most blamed.

Dr. Liu said in 1918 that such migrant workers were “perceived to be a subordinate and cheap source of labor, but they were constantly debilitating, causing a series of health and labor problems in plantations and land. Was causing

“As a result, they needed paternalism to ensure that the colonial government and property managers were properly cared for,” he said.

Today’s Covid-19 battle could open up opportunities for reform. Lawrence Wong, Minister for National Development, repeatedly emphasizes that regardless of nationality or race, the risk of infection in the population is the same.

Meanwhile, Minister of Labor, Josephine Theo, acknowledged the need to raise the bar for foreign labor dormitories, and promised to do so if the impending crisis was overcome.

Dr. Liew said: “Despite the endless vision of Covid-19, discussions and work are already underway to rethink the future economy and society after the pandemic.

“By taking a historical view in this respect, we can see the pandemic not only as an angel of death, but also as a subject of change.”

1957: Burn out

The Asian flu of 1957 and 1958, also known as the “Singapore virus”, was first isolated here by Professor Lim Kok An of the University of Malaya for more beneficial reasons.

The virus is believed to have spread in Guizhou Province of China and spread throughout Hong Kong, reaching Singapore in late April 1957 and infecting 30 marine workers living in Kampong, an offshore settlement in Plau Blani. did.

According to Professor Lee’s paper, it peaked in mid-May and burned out in just over a month, killing an estimated 680 people in Singapore.

Lyl Fearnley, associate professor of anthropology at the Singapore Institute of Technology, said the 1957 flu was the first pandemic the World Health Organization (WHO) had tracked around the world to establish a network of surveillance agencies known as the World Influenza Program. States. Singapore will be an important “trend intelligence” point for this network.

The purpose of this program was to detect new strains of influenza fast enough to develop prophylactic vaccines for international use.

Fearnley, whose pandemic book Virulent Zones will be released this year, says it did not actually protect much of the world’s population in 1957, nor did it succeed in subsequent pandemics. .

“Today, vaccines still take a significant amount of time to manufacture, test, and distribute. This means between our ability to quickly detect and track new pandemics and our ability to prevent vaccines with vaccines. Still has a big gap. “

Historian Lo Karsen describes the pandemic response of Singapore’s labor front government led by Prime Minister Lim Yu Hock as “minimal.”

Dr. M. Dryingham, then Assistant Secretary of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, even suggested burning it. “We can’t do anything about it,” he said, and added that he didn’t want to advise people to wear sterile masks because it might give people false hope.

WHO said it warned Southeast Asian countries a few months ago about the possible spread of the virus from Japan, but the Singaporean government needed to advise people to stay away from crowded areas until May 3. .

The school was closed on May 8, when 45,000 students were already infected with the flu.

“This does not necessarily indicate a weak government,” said Dr. Lo. “The same government established many of the key pillars of the TB control program-or will do within a year. The reaction was probably due to the unique characteristics of the pandemic of the flu.”

A May 7 ST report describes more than 3,000 queues in the outpatient department of Singapore General Hospital, a desperate mother disconnecting her queue to treat her children, and her father said: Side by side, ”I got the medicine from the clinic.

Loh said many patients were so weak that they could not seek treatment because of poverty. At times, the whole family was lying down, praying for the infection to disappear. Thanks to local relief and voluntary medical work, a free clinic for the poor has been opened.

1968: “No flu epidemic in Singapore”

Of the three pandemics, the 1968 Hong Kong flu was the mildest, lasting for weeks in August. Unlike the other two, the school was never closed. The government has considered it, but since many people are already infected and it makes no sense, no substantial health and safety measures have been adopted.

On August 9, medical director Ho Guan Lim told ST, “There was no influenza outbreak in Singapore,” but five days later, a large number of patients with flu-like symptoms came to the clinic. It has been reported.

Professor Lee’s paper estimates that more than 540 people were killed in the outbreak declared by September 7.

Professor Lee said: “In medicine, in public health we strive to look for evidence. Every pandemic is actually an opportunity to learn more and get more evidence. Of course, we want it to happen. Not, but to learn it, you need to take the opportunity. “-Straits Times / Asian News Network