Calling out Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his government for instructing people not to wear masks if they are well, Dr Chee Soon Juan said that this was the first of three serious missteps that lead to the second Covid-19 crisis in Singapore.

In a Facebook video yesterday (Apr 6), Secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) Dr Chee Soon Juan said that in his speech last Friday, PM Lee announced that the government will no longer discourage the wearing of masks.

Dr Chee said about the instructions, “It wasn’t even advice. It came across as if they were strict orders”.

“Why didn’t (PM Lee) listen to our own doctors who were calling for the people to wear masks”, Dr Chee asked.

He explained that in February, four local doctors even released a memo advising Singaporeans to always wear a mask when leaving the house. Their letter is a direct contradiction to the Ministry of Health’s advisory.

Their memo, titled ‘Health advisory from senior medical practitioners to Singaporeans’, states that they advise “everyone to wear a mask always when leaving home”. This is because, they add, “If one faces a person and both parties are masked, it is considerably safer, constituting a 2 barrier protection”.

Continuing, Dr Chee said that “the second bad judgement that Mr Lee made, as I pointed out in my last video, was to encourage Singaporeans to go out when the advice should have been to stay home”.

“The third big mistake was when the government allowed Malaysian workers to come into Singapore to work when the Malaysian government itself imposed a lockdown and closed its borders”, Dr Chee noted. He said that letting in the Malaysian workers led to more infections, and a suffering economy because of the lockdown.

“Has the PAP’s carelessness and/or lack of foresight led to the current situation of community spread spiking dramatically with local, I repeat, local, not imported, cases of new clusters and unlinked cases of infections?” Dr Chee posed.

Adding that it was the job of the opposition parties to dole out criticism when necessary, Dr Chee qualified that “the SDP, we made it a point to shut up and give the PAP the space to handle the Covid crisis”.

He urged members of the public to think critically for themselves as well. /TISG

Read related: Four Singaporean doctors advise wearing a mask at all times in direct contradiction with the MOH’s advisory