Disease Outbreak Response System

The Ministry of Health has come up with a Disease Outbreak Response System. Singapore is now at Alert Orange. The response plan allows a risk management approach appropriate to the transmissibility and virulence of the virus. Depending on the mutation pattern of the virus, the intermediate colour codes may be skipped.

 

	Alert Orange Virus becoming increasingly better adapted to humans but may not yet be fully transmissible , requiring close contact with an index case. Larger clusters appear in one or two places outside Singapore but a pandemic has not yet been declared. A cluster of cases may also occur in Singapore but human-to-human spread remains localized. Public health measures such as isolation and quarantine will be effective to break the chain of transmission. Strategy is to contain spread arising from any local cases and break the chain of transmission, while preserving essential services and resources.  Action: Implement “No visitor” rule at all hospitals. Restrict all inter-hospital movement of patients or healthcare workers. Set up Flu Clinics at the 18 Polyclinics for assessment and anti-viral treatment of flu-like patients. Commence antiviral prophylaxis for identified essential services. Encourage temperature taking at schools and all non-healthcare workplaces, markets, places of mass gatherings etc. Carry out temperature screening for in-bound and outbound passengers at all air, sea and land border checkpoints. Consider closing of schools and suspension of public gathering and events. (Please also see below for the definition of other codes in the Alert System)
	Alert Green Isolated external or local cases of animal-to-human transmission. Threat of human-to-human infection remains low. The disease, if any, is basically limited to animals. Strategy is to step up vigilance and make preparations to meet the potential threat. Action: Place close contacts of cases under phone surveillance and observe them for flu-like symptoms. Encourage healthcare workers and high-risk groups to get vaccinated against seasonal flu. Instruct use of personal protection equipment for those looking after suspect cases. Advise public to practise good personal hygiene habits and responsible social behaviour.
	Alert Yellow  All the measures taken in Alert Yellow will continue where operationally feasible.   Inefficient human-to-human transmissions of flu caused by a novel virus, requiring close and sustained contact to an index case. Further spread can be prevented through public health measures to isolate cases and quarantine contacts. Risk of import into Singapore elevated. Isolated imported cases may occur but there is no sustained transmission. Strategy is to prevent further import of cases, and to ring fence and isolate cases to prevent spread. The focus will be to provide treatment of all cases, and antiviral prophylaxis to contacts including exposed healthcare workers. Action: Alert Green action apart, institute home quarantine for close contacts of cases. Institute temperature screening and impose restriction on hospital and clinic visitors. Restrict inter-hospital movement, except in emergencies. Healthcare workers to take temperature twice a day. Institute temperature screening for passengers arriving from affected countries at border control checkpoints. Travellers from affected countries given Health Alert Notices (HANs) and advised to monitor their temperature daily for 1 incubation period.
	Alert Red WHO declares that an influenza pandemic has begun. Singapore eventually also affected. Higher risk of acquiring the disease from the community once pandemic spreads to Singapore . Strategy is to mitigate the impact of the pandemic. All measures taken in Alert Orange will continue to be applied. Closing of school and suspension of selected events to prevent congregation of large groups of people.
	Alert Black High rates of severe disease and deaths. Emergency measures implemented to bring the situation under control. Healthcare and social support systems are overwhelmed by the pandemic. Economic activities are severely disrupted. Strategy is to ensure that medical & public health measures take precedence over social & economic considerations. Focus is to contain the “damage” and regain control of the situation, Drastic measures like stopping all social events may be implemented. The majority of measures are as in Alert Red plus the following action: Suspend all public gatherings, schools and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHL) closures. Issue advisory to public to stay home or even consider imposing curfew.

If a singaporean gets affected it will increase to red level, it's going to be resident evil... Hope it really won't happen to SG...

Another surprise from my Class Advisor/Form Teacher

which is he nominate me for Ambassador for ITE College East cause I know how to speak well... Alright, he even said we might be travelling oversea to a few selected country... EH, WA LAO THIS IS FREAKING NICE LO... Once in a lifetime.... Must chiong for it... The Bridge Leader Teacher head was also one of the teacher who taught us, the one who likes to disturb our name in positive ways... Ah haha, he is really a nice teacher... Always make our lesson interesting, BETTER THAN SECONDARY SCHOOL AH...!! Then our class even create a so call war-cry lo, everytime someone will shout a phrase in malay, i just type out the matching words anyhow so pardon me... It sounds like:"SAPA steady kenan tengannnnn..." In english it means If you are steady raise up your right, but we didn't raise up our right hand lo but just reply back by shouting a dragged "OEY"... It's like got echo la and people were like watching us... Really dam nice... It' just to attract people's attention and to shout for fun or somewhat release stress...? Maybe...?

Well, I just enjoy it... I never go for the ICEP USA interview and the swine flu already started liao, it seems that whenever I did something wrong, somehow something big will happen or occur lo, like what Raj always said when I was with him at Changi Airport T1 when 2 British Airway plane got problem which he didn't even see it before even he started going to airport so often... Even Vincent also say it's true when I didn't attend something or accompany someone to someplace, something will happen on the subject... Haiz...

And a 23 month old US child just died from the swine flu... I read from wikipedia and it says 13 Sgreans suspected to have swine flu. There's even a debate among the usage of official name for the disease between muslim and ang mos... 

Some authorities object to calling the flu outbreak "swine flu". U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack expressed concerns that this would lead to the misconception that pork is unsafe for consumption.^[140] Israeli deputy health minister Yakov Litzman proposed the name "Mexican flu" because Muslims and Jews consider pork to be unclean,^[141] but the Israeli government retracted this proposal after Mexican complaints.^[142]The World Organization for Animal Health has proposed the name "North American influenza",^[143] while the European Commission uses "novel flu virus".^[142] Medical terminology refers to the virus as "Influenza A (H1N1) virus, human" 

Seriously like re-enactment of resident evil...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_outbreak

Situation in Thailand

Guys,
The earlier thread about going to BKK and the situation there. Just thought I'd share this with you here. One of our brothers from Thailand sent me this link via MSN.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1Ph-Fn_IFs

This is on the april 14, where you see the Red Shirts (Thaksin's supporters on the right) attacking the soldiers on the left. Soldiers (formed a line and well organized) just standing their ground, but the Red Shirts throw a molotov at them then drove a car into the soldiers knocking two down. It was then the soldiers opened fire - you can hear the gunshots after that. 

Whatever you hear on CNN or BBC with Thaksin saying that the Reds are protesting peacefully, is not true. 

Watch for yourself. 

Marcus

From my cosplaying company's forum : Movie Mania...

Pandemic: What would happen next?

The world hasn't seen a pandemic in 41 years, when the "Hong Kong" flu crossed the globe and killed about one million people worldwide. If swine flu reaches pandemic levels, what would happen next?

Recurrent outbreaks of Avian Influenza and the outbreak of SARS in 2003 rang alarm bells as potential pandemics.

Although both jumped the "animal-to-human" barrier, neither disease mutated enough to enable sustained human-to-human infection, said Dr. K.Y. Yuen, head of microbiology at Hong Kong University.

Strictly speaking, Avian Influenza and SARS did not become pandemics because they were too good at killing their hosts.

"For a sustained pandemic, it needs to be able to maintain human-to-human contact without killing its host off," he said.

Avian influenza "never became a man-to-man disease," said Dr. Lo Wing-Luk, an infectious disease expert.

"Swine flu is already a man-to-man disease, which makes it much more difficult to manage . and swine flu appears much more infectious than SARS."

But the WHO cautions, it cannot say whether or not it will indeed cause a pandemic. According to epidemiologists and health experts, here's what the world might see if there is another pandemic, based on past experience:

The disease would skip from city to city over an 18-to-24 month period, infecting more than a third of the population. World health Organization officials believe as many as 1.5 billion people around the globe would seek medical care and nearly 30 million would seek hospitalization. Based on the last pandemic and current world population, as many as 7 million people could die, epidemiologists said.

"Hospitals will become overcrowded, schools will close, businesses will close, airports will be empty," Dr. Lo said.

"Business will become very bad, as people avoid as much social contact as possible," added Dr. Yuen.

Health facilities will become overrun with patients and there would be less-than-adequate staffing, as medical health professionals fall ill themselves, experts say. "We saw cases in SARS where people who should have gone to the hospital for things like cancer treatment didn't go, and that resulted in higher deaths," Dr. Lo said.

The very young and very old will likely be the most susceptible to the illness.

Experts caution, much is still unknown about the current swine flu virus and its severity and it is too early to say whether it will lead to a pandemic. Right now, the focus is on finding answers and containing the spread. 

Source taken from reliable news channel CNN

CHIA LAT LEH... Now someone posted on forum hardwarezone there saying Mexico looks like Racoon City infected by Umbrella Biohazard ? Should we neutralize the city with nuclear bomb ? http://forums.hardwarezone.com.sg/showthread.php?t=2351765

What did I do today...??

Today had lifeskills session and we are told to do this DISC exercise, then I let my teacher see and she said I'm a interesting guy, you lead as a leader, when I'm under pressure I will talk alot... Ah haha... Somehow true lo... Ah haha, and just now I finish making 3 super funny MV from a website, that website allows us to upload our face and put it on the body and just dance or do anything as what the video is showing... And so I did 3 mv, they are Chippendales Dance, Men's weightlifting and Breakin... They are really super funny video which can make you laugh like mad... Click on the blue words to view the funny videos...

Chippendales Dance

Men's Weightlifting

Breakin

Solar eclipse of July 22, 2009... F* that perosn who say got earthquake which will cause tsunami and Singapore will be affected...

Solar eclipse of July 22, 2009

The solar eclipse that will take place on Wednesday, July 22, 2009 will be a total eclipse of the Sun with a magnitude of 1.080 that will be visible from a narrow corridor through northernIndia, eastern Nepal, northern Bangladesh, Bhutan, the northern tip of Myanmar, centralChina and the Pacific Ocean, including Ryukyu Islands, Marshall Islands and Kiribati. Totality will be visible in many cities such as Surat, Varanasi, Patna, Thimphu, Chengdu,Chongqing, Wuhan, Hangzhou and Shanghai. A partial eclipse will be seen from the much broader path of the Moon's penumbra, including most of South East Asia and north-easternOceania.

This solar eclipse is the longest total solar eclipse that will occur in the twenty-first century, and will not be surpassed in duration until June 13, 2132. Totality will last for up to 6 minutes and 39 seconds, with the maximum eclipse occurring in the ocean at 02:35:21 UTCabout 100 km south of the Bonin Islands, southeast of Japan. The North Iwo Jima island is the landmass with totality time closest to maximum.

SINGAPORE: An email is going around warning about an impending earthquake and tsunami hitting parts of Asia, including Singapore. It claims that disaster will strike on July 22, the same day as a solar eclipse. 

The email says that apart from Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, the giant wave may also hit countries as far as Japan, Australia and India. 

But the credibility of the email is questionable. For one, it is riddled with spelling errors, and two, it does not cite any credible source. 

While it is true that a solar eclipse will occur on July 22, experts said there is no connection between an eclipse and an earthquake. 

Professor Kerry Sieh, director, Earth Observatory of Singapore, said: "In the last 110 years or so, there have been about 85 really big earthquakes – 8 (on the Richter magnitude scale) or greater. And only two of those occurred on the same day as an eclipse. And even those were a partial eclipse, not a total eclipse. They happened in a different place from where the eclipse happened." 

While the professor does not think the email holds water, he warns that research does show that parts of Asia facing the Pacific Ocean could be hit by a tsunami. He said the impact on Singapore will be minimal, but not so for cities further up north. 

"It turns out that by the time the wave produced by the underwater disturbance got to Singapore, it would be only about a metre high. But in Macau and Hong Kong, it would about 10 to 15 metres high," said Professor Sieh. 

He said more work needs to be done to determine if the fault lines along the Pacific Ocean floor will break in such a way that could see a repeat of the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. 

On July 22, those in Singapore can see a partial eclipse, beginning at about 8.40am till about 9.40am. 

Ytd and today

Let's talk abt ytd, face the com until afternoon and take a nap until 5pm and continue to face my com for rd 2... Then had dinner and started counting down for the race to start lo... Ytd's Bahrain was quite good as only one driver retire from the race and there isn't accident or sandstorm present... Oh well, watch the whole part and after that switch to local tv okto and watch Army Daze. Watch before already and so watch again as I want to see that gu niang recruit call Kenny Pereira... People camouflage use green leaves and so he decorate until there's flowers on his helmet... Ah haha... And also that ah beng, he's also very funny... Ah haha... Mr Pinto's company, Eurotour travel agency... Located at orchard rd there... President somemore orh... Nice...

Today schooling was still good, don't know why my classmates suddenly went to photo taking... Something wrong with them... Firstly was a picture with 1/3 of the girls from my class, the vice-chairperson suddenly pop up and say "YOU THIS PLAYBOY"... Then i reply back "Why, u jealous ah??" and then the girls also fire back at him by saying that too... Ah haha, I was laughing when i was lying on the blue bench after the photo-taking... Another one was with the whole grp of boys inside the pic and another one was I'm the only one sitting on the chair as they purposely ask me to sit as i wasn't inside the pic... They told me to sit prperly but I ignore their words lo... I look like the head of the gang like that lo wa lao... But it was a nice picture taken... I like it... By the way, my class has the most girl in an engineering class, teacher also said that...