Recent Heightened Ring Fencing Strategies Have Helped Prevent 2nd Circuit Breaker for Now

Goody morning! How are you enjoying the second week of your lockdown—I mean Circuit Breaker 2—I mean Phase 2 (Heightened Alert)?

But in all seriousness, it appears that new strategies of containment have limited COVID-19 transmissions enough to prevent a real Circuit Breaker 2.

Yay, government!

Ring Fencing Strategies May Be Working

The metaphor “ring fencing” refers to a containment strategy where all people within a location suspected to facilitate COVID-19 spread are isolated from further interactions with the public. It was first used in 2003 to combat the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak.

Professor Teo Yik Ying of the National University of Singapore (NUS) explained that ring fencing can stop transmissions from “spilling over to other sectors” if action is immediately taken when COVID-19 transmission is discovered.

How fast restrictions can be placed, however, is dependent on “the extent of human-to-human interactions, personal safe management measures and the characteristics of the coronavirus infection, such as whether infected cases have high viral loads,” according to Prof Teo.

How the Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) cluster was handled was an example of this strategy: the hospital quickly closed Ward 9D when transmission occurred, extended the lockdown to four wards when it became clear transmission was not limited to a single ward, and eventually stopped admitting patients.

Ring fencing strategies also include mandatory testing, contact tracing, and deep cleaning in affected areas. In the TTSH cluster, close to 28,000 COVID-19 tests were conducted, and all 116 households in Block 506 Hougang Avenue 8 were subjected to mandatory testing after several COVID-19 can were discovered.

People who visited high-risk areas were also urged to be tested, such as in the case of the White Sands, Jem, and Westgate malls. Greater restrictions were imposed on the latter two with their temporary closure when it emerged that transmissions may have occurred there.

Singapore’s ring fencing strategy has also pivoted towards placing restrictions on wider areas compared to last year: home-based learning (HBL) is imposed on whole schools when students are found infected, instead of starting with locking down classes and levels like last year.

Professor Josip Car of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) remarked that “whole-country lockdowns may be necessary, but only in the event of many localised outbreaks or uncontrolled spread where contact tracing resources are overstretched,” adding that they may not be more effective than localised restrictions in situations of limited transmissions.

The number of unlinked cases is an important indicator of whether ring fencing is successful. If unlinked cases start appearing across the island so rapidly that targeted ring fencing can no longer catch up, a general lockdown may be necessary to halt the outbreak.

For now, that does not seem necessary. Let’s hope it stays that way. I’m looking forward to leaving my house on 13 June.

Feature Image: kandl stock / Shutterstock.com (Image is for illustration purposes only)