Will opening of the causeway lead to more risks?

Malaysia and Singapore have agreed to implement Reciprocal Green Lane (RGL) and Periodic Commuting Arrangement (PCA) travel, allowing citizens from either side of the Johor Strait to cross the border for work or official purposes, beginning Aug 10.

1) The RGL scheme will enable cross-border travels for essential business and official purposes.

• Eligible travelers will have to abide by prevailing Covid-19 prevention and public health measures including PCR swab tests.

• They will also be expected to submit to the relevant authorities of the receiving country a controlled itinerary and adhere to this during their visit.

• Initially, 400 Malaysians and Singaporeans would be allowed under this scheme

2) For the PCA scheme, it would allow Singapore and Malaysia residents, who hold long-term immigration passes for business and work purposes in the other country, to enter that country for work.

• After at least three consecutive months in their country of work, they may return to their home country for short-term home leave, and thereafter, re-enter their country of work to continue working for at least another three consecutive months.

• These travelers will also have to abide by the prevailing Covid-19 prevention and public health measures.

• Initially, some 2,000 Malaysians and Singaporeans would be allowed under this scheme. 

If the initial phase works, then it would be extended to cover the daily crossing of between 200,000 to 250,000 Malaysians and Singaporeans and the full opening of the borders. 

I think there are 2 questions to be raised

• Are we able to monitor those coming from Singapore under both the above schemes? 

• Will there be additional risks from Singaporeans coming into Malaysia and/or Malaysians coming back into Malaysia?  In other words, is the risk of infection in Singapore worse than in Malaysia?

Monitoring

I don’t know whether you saw the news the day before about the Russian Novgorod cluster

• One student coming back from Russia was found positive during screening at the airport

• His friend on the same flight was screened negative and allowed to go home for self-quarantine

• A few days later this friend fell sick with Covid-19

• The worst part is that he has infected his father and another 

• To date there are 5 cases from this cluster and all those close contacts are under observation

I have earlier voiced my concern about our self-quarantine process and I think this is a good example of what could go wrong.   I don’t think it would be so different for many families who have some self-quarantine member ie they are likely to get into close contact with the quarantined person.

The other interesting news is that our Defence Minister has threatened to take stern action against the 255 people who had self-quarantined but still refused to get their 2nd Covid-19 test. 

It clearly shows that not everyone will follow SOP (and assuming that the SOP are tight enough to prevent the transmission of the virus)

So now we will have these thousands of Malaysians coming back from Singapore regularly.

  

Do you have confidence in all of them following the SOP?

I think the only protection we have is if there is very little chance of getting infected when in Singapore.  To answer this question, we have to look at how the virus has been spreading in Singapore. 

Singapore Covid-19 status

The Covid-19 situation in Singapore can be summarized by the table below that shows the cumulative number of cases as of 13 Jul 2020 (Source: Singapore MOH press release).

13 Jul 2020	Singapore Permanent Residents	Long-term and work pass holders	Visitors	Sub-total
Imported	431	133	52	616
Community	1,290	764	9	2,063   (a)
Dormitories	NA	43,604	NA	43,604
Sub-total	1,721	44,501	61	46,283

Note

(a) Of the 2,063 cases, 1,310 or 63 % are linked cases (ie clusters)

As can be seen, the majority of the cases are due to migrant workers staying in the dormitories. Over the period from April to Jul, the growth in cases can be summarized as

• 48 imported cases equivalent to about 0.5 cases daily

• 1029 local and/or community spread equivalent to about 11 cases daily

• 42,288 cases from those in the dorms

Why are the cases in the dorm still so high?  Yes, it is declining from 

• 723 daily cases from April to May
• 478 daily cases from May to June
• 193 daily cases from June to Jul

But it begs the question that it is more than 3 months since the spike in cases among the migrant works and so whatever index cases would have recovered.  

I take it to mean that the current cases are due to those from the other generations ie the people in the dorm are spreading it amount themselves.

I am curious why they are spreading because we have similar situations in Malaysia with our EMCIO areas eg One City, Selangor Mansion.  

We EMCO these areas and while initially there are increases in the number of cases, within a couple of weeks, the cases from these EMCO areas dropped dramatically.

To be fair, I do not have any picture of what the conditions in the Singapore dorms are like or what Singapore authorities are doing in the dorm.  

But from what I have read, it appears that those in the dorm are isolated from the rest of the community and it does sound like our EMCO. 

If so, how come the number of cases from the dorms is not dropping at a rate like what Malaysia had with our EMCO areas.  

I hope our Singapore readers can fill in the blanks.

Non-dorm cases

Leaving aside this question on why it is taking so long to control it among the dorm residents, the other question is whether there has been any “leakage” ie transmission between those in the dorm and the general public.

I am presuming that there is hardly any spread between the dorm workers and those in the general community as I have not seen such reports.

So the local/community spread is among the non-dorm people. 

If you look at the local/community spread it is 276 cases from 13 Jun to 13 Jul for Singapore. In comparison for the same period, Malaysia had 

• 86 cases (excluding imported ones and foreign workers). 

• 228 cases including foreign workers (but excl imported). Note that there is no detention cluster during this period to skew the figures

I would say that leaving aside the dorms, Singapore actually had 20% more cases and is in a more densely populated area whereas, for Malaysia, our numbers are for the whole country.

If you look at the pattern of the daily number of cases for the past 2 weeks for the 2 countries, you can see that the incidence in Singapore is higher. 

I would conclude that the risk of infection in Singapore is higher than the risk of infection in Johore (where the causeways are located). 

Conclusion: I do expect more cases to be reported in the Johore areas when the border is opened as

• There will not be 100 % SOP compliance

• The risk of infection is still higher in Singapore c/w Malaysia. 

I do hope that the Malaysian MOH is prepared for such contingencies eg having more random sampling on the causeway crossings. 

Appendix

For those interested, the tables below show the breakdown of the cases in Singapore for the past 4 months.

Malaysia has a different reporting format than Singapore so in order to have an apple to apple comparison between Singapore and Malaysia, I think that the dorm cases are equivalent to 5those in our EMCO areas.

I estimated that we have about 1,000 cases from the EMCO areas which comes to about 12% of the total Malaysian cases c/w Singapore dorm cases of 94 %. 

About 60 + % of Singapore community cases are linked cases (ie clusters).  There are about 40 clusters in Malaysia and we have a higher % linked to clusters c/w Singapore.

Singapore’s pace of imported cases from Jun to Jul is much smaller than Malaysia's.  But I think this is related to Malaysia’s policy of allowing students to come home so I wouldn’t read too much into these.  

At this stage, I have not seen reports of the local cases that are due to transmission by imported ones so I don’t know whether the size for such transmission in either Singapore or Malaysia. 

13 Jun 2020	Singapore Permanent Residents	Long-term and work pass holders	Visitors	Sub-total
Imported	411	118	51	580
Community	1,188	591	8	1,787   (a)
Dormitories	NA	37,830	NA	37,830
Sub-total	1,599	38,539	59	40,197

 Note

(a) Of the 1,787 cases,  1,157 or 65 % are linked cases (clusters) 

13 May 2020	Singapore Permanent Residents	Long-term and work pass holders	Visitors	Sub-total
Imported	410	119	51	580
Community	1,093	657         (a)	8	1,758   (b)
Dormitories	NA	23,008	NA	23,008
Sub-total	1,503	23,784	59	25,346

 Note

(a) This included 434 work pass holders residing outside the dorm

(b) Of the 1,758 cases, 1058 or 60 % are linked cases (clusters)

 

13 Apr 2020   (a)	Singapore Permanent Residents	Long-term and work pass holders	Visitors	Sub-total
Imported				568
Community				1,034
Dormitories	NA	1,316	NA	1,316
Sub-total				2,918

Note: This table was re-constructed based on MOH reporting format then

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PS: This blog is for me to better understand COVID 19 as this will impact my investments. If you are also into equities, follow me at i4value.asia.

Disclaimer:  I am not an epidemiologist, healthcare worker, pharmacist, or staff in the Ministry of Health, but rather is someone with a strong interest in numerical analysis.  The content is an attempt to understand what is happening in the battle against COVID 19 from a data-based perspective. The opinions expressed here are based on information extracted from readily available public sources but I do not warrant its completeness or accuracy and should not be relied on as such.