Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Holdings Ho Ching shared in a few Facebook posts images from Singapore Expo, which had been converted into a Community Isolation Facility for recovering COVID-19 patients.
"There is difference between the Stay Home Notice (SHN) type isolation vs isolation for recovering or even known patients," she wrote.
Explaining that for people serving SHN, it is not known whether they are carrying the virus. They are required to be isolated from others for the duration of the 14 day incubation period of the virus.
On the other hand, for COVID-19 patients – recovering or otherwise – they need to be isolated from people without the virus, but not from each other.
Some recovering patients are already clinically well, which means they no longer have pneumonia, but could potentially still be infectious. "So what do we do? Makes no sense to keep them in single room isolation, and take up valuable beds, right?" Ho Ching wrote in her post.
"So we send them to Downtown East resort, where they can mingle among themselves, but remain isolated from the rest of the public."
The patients will be looked after by doctors, nurses and cleaners, who will be in protective gear when they enter the patient area.
The Community Isolation Facility consists of cubicles for privacy, as well as common interaction areas for the patients to lounge in. "Not 5-star cruise ship standard but decent enough."
Ho Ching also urged recovering patients to consider donating their blood. "Both to extract plasma for treating seriously sick patients, and to hunt for antibody bits which can be used to make human monoclonal antibody treatments, and/or vaccines."
