For Asian countries like Singapore, which were some distance from Ground Zero of the outbreak in Mexico, there was advance warning, and thus time to implement containment measures at borders.
On the other hand, the United States had little time to contain the disease, and thus dispensed with attempts to do so, moving quickly to the mitigation phase instead.
But all the different approaches are right, a Health Ministry spokesman said yesterday.
She was responding to a reader who wrote in to Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao on Thursday and questioned why control measures differ from country to country.
Mr Zhang Shao Cheng wrote that he had recently travelled to Los Angeles for work, and said there were no thermal scanners or other temperature checks at the airport.
He was puzzled, as the World Health Organisation (WHO) had just declared a flu pandemic.
In fact, he wrote, people were not even aware of the pandemic.
Read the full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times
