THE FRONT LINE GUARDIAN
colonel (dr) shalini arulanandam, 41
Chief medical officer of Singapore Civil Defence Force
During the Circuit Breaker, urgent wails of the ambulance siren resounded throughout Singapore, amplified by the silence of the roads. What we did not know then was that an ambulance was rushing someone to a hospital every 15 minutes or so.
“During the peak of the outbreak, we conveyed about 90 cases per day to NCID,” recalls Colonel (Dr) Shalini Arulanandam, chief medical officer of the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF). The sheer volume of patients was something that stood out to her vividly during that time.
“The caseload was very high. If you went down to the dormitories you would see several SCDF ambulances there,” she adds.
As of Oct 31, 2020, SCDF’s 995 hotline had received over 8,000 calls regarding suspected Covid-19 cases. Its fleet of 83 emergency ambulances, manned by over 1,400 emergency
