Despite what some of your contacts would like to believe, WhatsApp isn’t Encyclopedia Britannica.
The information sent to you over the popular messaging platform isn’t checked for factual accuracy by anyone. (Our uncles are not legitimate fact-checkers).
As a result, people can make all sorts of unverified claims on the app, which are then forwarded to more people, and soon you have a large group of residents believing something completely untrue.
These include claims that drinking hot water can cure Covid-19, that an election has been rigged, or that the authorities are hiring 5,000 people to spot-check households during Chinese New Year.
Claims That Authorities Hiring 5,000 People to Spot-Check on Households During CNY Are Fake
The Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment (MSE) rubbished the claim that the gahmen is hiring individuals to enforce rules on household visits during the Lunar New Year period.
A message circulating on WhatsApp recently claimed that an agency will employ 5,000 temporary staff members to “go around houses to check the number of visitors present in each household”.
The message even included details on how much they would be paid for the job.
But of course, as with many claims on WhatsApp, this particular one is false.
“There is no such hiring exercise being conducted by agencies involved in the enforcement of safe distancing measures (SDMs) and safe management measures (SMMs),” MSE told CNA.
The ministry said that agencies have deployed Safe Distancing Ambassadors (SDAs) since the circuit breaker in 2020, and have been hiring since then to replace workers who have left.
But the number of SDAs has always remained constant.
“There is no plan to hire an additional 5,000 SDAs for the Lunar New Year period,” MSE said.
New Restrictions Ahead of CNY
As you know, the authorities imposed new restrictions on house visits, among other things, after a recent rise in community Covid-19 cases.
Last week, co-chair of the Covid-19 task force Lawrence Wong explained why.
“We only need to recall what happened last year when we indeed saw a spike in cases after Chinese New Year, and we had many clusters linked to Chinese New Year gatherings”.
“This was last year, we don’t want a repeat of that happening”, he said.
For those who don’t know, the new restrictions were announced by the Ministry of Health (MOH) about a week ago, and kicked in on Tuesday (26 Jan).
As part of the additional measures, there is now a cap of 8 distinct visitors per household per day.
Simply put, this means you can’t have one group of 8 relatives over in the morning, and another group of 8 in the evening.
Individuals should also limit themselves to visiting at most two other households a day, and visit family members only.
Moreover, face masks must be worn during the tossing of yusheng, and the lohei should be done without any verbalisation of the usual auspicious phrases.
These measures were introduced to further mitigate the risk of large community clusters arising from infections that spread within a household and through them to all their contacts.
Sure, our CNY celebrations will be a subdued affair this year, but at least we can still visit some relatives, right?
Reader: Actually that’s the part of CNY I don’t like
Featured Image: Facebook (Masagos Zulkifli)
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