Model coronavirus response, then cases spiked. What happened?

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Model coronavirus response, then cases spiked. What happened?
Model coronavirus response, then cases spiked. What happened?

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Hong Kong (CNN)Less than a month ago, Singapore was being hailed as one of the countries that had got its coronavirus response right.

Encouragingly for the rest of the world, the city-state seemed to have suppressed cases without imposing the restrictive lockdown measures endured by millions elsewhere.
And then the second wave hit, hard. Since March 17, Singapore's number of confirmed coronavirus cases grew from 266 to over 5,900, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
While in the worst-hit countries of western Europe and in the US, thousands of cases are being reported every day, Singapore has a population of 5.7 million people and a total area of around 700 square kilometers -- it is smaller than New York City -- meaning those numbers are more significant.
But Singapore also has advantages that many larger countries don't. It only has one major land border, with Malaysia, and can keep a tight control on people entering by air. It also has a world-class health system and a propensity for somewhat draconian rules and policing that can benefit a government when trying to control a pandemic.
So what went wrong?
The answer appears to lie in overlooked clusters of cases among migrant workers living in cramped dormitories and an underestimation of the speed at which those infections could spread through a city where lockdown measures had not been put in place.

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