Singapore Issues Students Thermometers

April 30, 2003

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Along with pencils and books, children in Singapore must now pack thermometers in their school bags so they can check their temperatures twice a day to detect SARS.

Teachers began distributing 5 million Singapore dollars ($2.8 million) worth of government-subsidized digital thermometers to primary school students on Wednesday as part of the city-state's campaign against severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Singapore has suffered 25 deaths among 201 SARS infections. The latest fatality was a 25-year-old male nurse from a nursing home who died on Wednesday.

Since Singapore's outbreak began in March, students, bus and taxi drivers, health workers, and civil servants have begun taking their temperatures at least twice a day. By the third week of May, every student from elementary school through junior colleges will be issued a thermometer or a reusable fever strip, the Education Ministry has said.

At Gongshang Primary School, 7-year-old Lee Cheun Leong used his new thermometer to discover he had a healthy temperature of 97.7 degrees.

Lee said if his temperature climbs to 100.4 degrees, it might be because he has SARS, a disease which he believes was "made by Hong Kong."

"It was a doctor in Hong Kong who made it," he said.

Children in Singapore have been told that the majority of the city-state's SARS cases can be traced to a 23-year-old woman who traveled to Hong Kong in February and, while there, crossed paths with a mainland Chinese doctor stricken with SARS.

The island-wide fever monitoring campaign is aimed at catching people with SARS before they infect others but the economic fallout has already been severe.

Singapore Airlines, the nation's flag carrier, told its cabin crews Wednesday they would have to take a week's unpaid leave every two months until March next year and was cutting almost 300 flights per week to cut costs.

Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong asked Singaporeans to brace for higher unemployment in his Labor Day message late Tuesday, "as the full impact of SARS makes itself felt."

"We cannot control this bad weather, and will just have to wait it out. We will try to stay dry as best we can, and use the time to plan for the future," Goh said.

Students had a three-week forced vacation when the outbreak began about six weeks ago and have since been educated about the disease. Nine children under 18 have come down with SARS in Singapore but all have recovered.

Unlike Hong Kong, students in Singapore don't wear masks. Singapore officials have discouraged people from wearing masks, arguing that only health workers and the very sick need them.

"We don't want the students to be too frightened or too complacent," Education Minister Teo Chee Hean said. "So far we've done a good job of striking the right balance."