SAF Soldiers Now Helping in Contact Tracing; Working 12-Hour Shifts to Fight COVID-19

By
George Yang
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I’m pretty sure when a person signed within the box to become a regular soldier, he or she would be looking forward to these:

  • Fighting in a jungle with rifles and real bullets for the liberation of Singapore
  • Deploying to other planets to fight aliens that have invaded planet Earth
  • Winning a war & cheering after that

While they might never experience the first two points in their entire career, they’re going to experience the third point.

Soon.

Because soldiers have been deployed in the war against COVID-19, and this time, it’s not packing masks, but doing something more pressing: contact tracing.

SAF Soldiers Now Helping in Contact Tracing; Working 12-Hour Shift to Fight COVID-19

1,500 personnel from MINDEF and SAF have traded their SAR21 for phones.

Reader Bao: No wonder I keep on receiving SMSes from them about my IPPT.

No, CPL Bao; they’re not in the business of reminding you to book your IPPT. These men and women, comprising soldiers on active duties to SAF Volunteer Corps to DXOs, are now making thousands of calls 12 hours a day and 7 days a week in a safe-distanced operations room to contact trace, and to contact SHN people who’ve been unresponsive or have gone out to eat Bak Kut Teh.

Today, MINDEF posted images of the men and women in green hard at work:

In addition to calling people, they’ve also assisted in temperature screening in Changi Airport since 28 January 2020.

Now, that’s what I call an efficient use of resources.

Commander of 6th Division Brigadier-General (BG) Lee Yi-Jin, who also leads the SAF task force for health monitoring and contact tracing, said, “I think it’s quite clear that our loved ones and our way of life are vulnerable for as long as the virus remains uncontained.

“When MOH asked us for our support, we were very clear that this is something we have to do and that we would step up and step forward.”

According to 3rd Sergeant (3SG) Rueben George Pharez, who would have repairing tanks or building bridges while holding on to a SAR21, his team of four make a few hundred calls to people who are on SHN and haven’t responded to calls.

He’s now working from 9am to 9pm, but like what SAF would always say, “You’re 24/7,” so this should be much better than outfield.

And not to forget people who volunteered to be in SAF and then volunteered to fight this nasty bug.

SV1 Lim Ly Li is a NUS undergraduate and instead of using the downtime to catch up on her schoolwork, the 23-year-old stepped up to fight the COVID-19.

With Singapore going on a circuit breaker measure (I know, it still sounds weird), these men and women in green are going to fight a longer war.

But hey: how many of you can say that you’ve fought a war when you’re in service?

Here’s a simplified summary of the South Korea martial law that even a 5-year-old would understand:

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George Yang
Email: [email protected]