Singapore backlash at Indian minister’s Covid claims

Singapore has rejected claims from India that a new Singapore variant of COVID-19 is in circulation and is ‘extremely dangerous to children’.

Boat Quay in Singapore is deserted on Wednesday as Covid restrictions bite. Picture: AFP

Singapore has angrily rejected claims from India that a new Singapore variant of COVID-19 is in circulation and is “extremely dangerous to children”.

After weeks of battling the world’s worst COVID outbreak in the sprawling Indian capital, New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal posted warnings to Twitter on Tuesday of the “new strain”, along with an appeal to the Indian government to cancel flights to and from the Southeast Asian city state, which is experiencing its own fresh COVID-19 surge.

“The new form of Corona that came to Singapore is being said to be extremely dangerous for children, in India it may come as a third wave,” Mr Kejriwal wrote in Hindi. “My appeal to the central government is for air services with Singapore to be cancelled with immediate effect and to prioritise the options for vaccinating children at the earliest.”

Mr Kejriwal’s comments, reported by the English-language Hindustan Times and NDTV news channel, came a day after Singapore announced a two-week school closure because several children had been diagnosed with the B1.167.2 strain, first identified in India and one of two sub-variants (along with the B1.167) known colloquially as “Indian strains”.

Singapore Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said the decision was necessary because the mutated viral strains were “much more virulent” and “seem to attack the younger children”.

A Singapore Health Ministry spokesman was forced to issue a formal rebuttal, saying there was “no truth whatsoever” to Mr Kejriwal’s claims.

“There is no ‘Singapore variant’. The strain that is prevalent in many of the COVID-19 cases in recent weeks is the B1.617.2 variant, which originated in India. Phylogenetic testing has shown this B1.617.2 variant to be associated with several clusters in Singapore,” the spokesman said.

Singapore’s Minister for Transport, Chee Hong Tat, also weighed in on social media.

“It is disappointing to see such nonsense coming from Chief Minister Kejriwal,” Mr Chee wrote on Facebook.

The B1.617 strain was first reported in India in October and is now believed responsible for a fresh infection surge across South and Southeast Asia. The World Health Organisation has classified it as a variant “of concern”.

On April 24, Singapore barred entry to all long-term and short-term pass holders who had recently travelled from India to try to prevent the strains from entering the country.

Just a few days later, Singapore was ranked as the best place to ride out the pandemic in Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking, knocking New Zealand off the top of its leader board, in a ranking that included factors such as freedom of movement and vaccine efficiency.

But, faced with a surge in cases of the Indian variants, Singapore this week reimposed several lockdown-style restrictions, including school closures until the end of the month, a temporary ban on in-restaurant dining, social gatherings reduced to just two people and office capacity down to 50 per cent.

The island of 5.9 million people has a total caseload of 61, 659 after confirming an additional 27 on Tuesday and a death toll of 31, while India — with almost 1.4 billion people — has now confirmed more than 25 million cases, and at least 278,719 deaths.