Generation C19

I’m Josh and I am a nurse at an isolation facility. I trained as a nurse and was an ER nurse for four years before deciding to take a sabbatical to travel. I was barely into my grand globetrotting adventure when the pandemic hit and I found myself back in Singapore. With our Covid-19 numbers rising, there was a need for frontline workers, and so, I found myself back in scrubs, masks and crocs… and a full armour of PPE (Personal Protection Equipment).  When life gives you pandemic lemons, well, you dive headfirst into a pandemic community isolation facility, I...

I felt like a pilot receiving news of his flight deteriorating, with each new update bringing us closer to an unwanted conclusion. All I could do was make the next decision with the information I was receiving, hoping it was the right one. Managing the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) program in Toronto, Canada, I shepherd students as they navigate their entrepreneurship journeys in foreign lands. I work with start-ups, partner universities, and local stakeholders to help NUS and Singapore leave a positive footprint in these innovation ecosystems. Household names like Carousell and Shopback are fruits of this labour. For startups,...

27 April 2020, 9:46 AM. Today is the day. I am going to be induced because our baby’s head is getting a little too big for her own good. So here I am, at my obstetrician’s clinic, all alone. Tim isn’t allowed to enter the clinic because of COVID-19 precautionary measures. And I hate that I don’t have his hand to hold during this whole painful process of labour induction. 27 April 2020, 10:13 AM. It’s a weird feeling for me to be left out of the conversation. Call it an occupational hazard or a personality thing, but I’ve always...

  It was near the end of February that the questions started to come relentlessly from Evan, my 3 ½ year old son.   “Daddy, why do we need to use hand sterilizer?”  “Why don’t you need to go to the office?” “ When can we go visit Grandpa?”  10 minutes later….  “I want you to tell me again”.  Another 15 minutes.  “Mummy, tell me one more time”.  And so, the idea for a kids book about the coronavirus was born. To two slightly tired parents.  A book with colorful pictures and catchy rhymes, that might help young children like Evan...

Covid-19 snuck up on us. From the get go, we were quick to heighten screening  of suspect cases, with these being sent by ambulance to NCID. Everyone was on high alert.  But a lot of what we did was reactionary too. Information was sparse, screening criteria would also change day to day, and we would constantly be adjusting to new rules, research, discoveries and best-practices.  The initial main question on every doctors' mind was "Is this as bad as SARS?", both in terms of mortality rate, and how it spread. Followed closely with: "Will I catch it at work?" and,...