Dead Mall Big Box in Jurong Has Turned into Medical Facility to House COVID-19 Cases

When Big Box was first announced to open in the west, people were excited.

Westie4Everboiboi: A warehouse-style shopping experience with all the furniture and electronics that you’ve ever wanted?! Hell YEAH!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before people in the west learned that there are some things that are too good to be true, and Big Box died.

Well, on 17 Aug 2020, it’s reported that Big Box is going to have a second (temporary) shot at life, this time for a greater cause.

Dead Mall Big Box in Jurong Has Turned into Medical Facility to House COVID-19 Cases

Singapore has a few strategies to deal with Covid-19:

• Fine anyone who doesn’t follow Covid-19 rules
• Separate cases (even suspect ones) from society
• Put serious Covid-19 cases in the hospitals
• Less-serious ones are put into Community Care Facilities (CCF) like the one at Expo and manned by patriotic NSMen

And so far, it’s been working fine, especially the last one which helped to alleviate so much stress off the healthcare system.

Since 4 July 2020, Big Box has been transformed into a community care facility, in charge of handling Covid-19 patients who have just recovered, or those who show little to no symptoms.

The CCF has a capacity of 2,900 and is operated by Resorts World Sentosa.

A reporter from Lianhe Zaobao revealed that the authorities have commandeered the first to the third level of the mall.

Nonetheless, the facility was kept very well-secured with no chance of members of the public getting infected with the virus.

S’pore Being Kiasu

It was announced that a few community facilities, such as the ones at military camps, Tanjong Pagar Terminal and Prince George’s Park Residences in the National University of Singapore’s Kent Ridge campus are being kept in reserve, leaving only four of such facilities still operating, including Big Box.

The other operational CCFs are Singapore Expo, Changi Exhibition Centre, and D’Resort NTUC in Pasir Ris.

Back in March 2020, the authorities revealed that the three facilities in the east can provide 10,000 beds.

If you’ve been keeping yourself up to date with the Covid-19 situation in Singapore, you’ll know that we’re doing pretty well.

With the exception of one day, we’ve been reported daily figures of less than a hundred for the past few days.

Based on the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) press release yesterday, there are 82 Covid-19 patients still in the hospitals and 3,685 who are cared for at CCFs.

The reason is that the authorities wanted to have capacity at the CCFs available if there is a need for more bed spaces.

If that’s not enough, the facilities that were placed reserves can be reactivated fastly, creating another 20,000 beds.

Although hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that since it means we might just be kicked screaming back into CB again, targeted or not.