2 Hotpot Eateries in Popular Malls Among Places Visited By Covid-19 Cases

After learning that the Ministry of Health (MOH) didn’t add any new locations on Monday (31 Aug) to its already long list of public places visited by infectious Covid-19 cases, you finally left your house for the first time in eight months, throwing caution to the wind.

I can finally go to places without worrying if Covid-19 patients had been there!

So you travelled all over the country, eating alarming amounts of food and buying things you don’t need.

But then you came across this article, and found out that MOH had only taken a short, one-day break.

2 Hotpot Eateries in Popular Malls Among Places Visited By Covid-19 Cases

Two hotpot eateries have been added to MOH’s list of public places visited by infectious coronavirus cases, said the ministry on Tuesday (1 Sep).

These include the Xiao Long Kan Hotpot restaurant at Bugis Junction and Da Long Yi Hot Pot restaurant at Orchard Central.

Other places that were recently added to the list include:

• Don Dae Bak Restaurant (35 Kreta Ayer Road)
• Eco-Shop@Bedok (206 Bedok North Street 1)
• McDonald’s branch at Pasir Ris Sports Complex
•  S-11 AMK 530 Food House (Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10)
• Yuan Yuan Cafe (26 New Upper Changi Road)
• Zhang Liang Mala Ting (3 Pickering Street)
•  Mei Heong Yuen Dessert shop at Temple Street
• Starbucks at Bugis Junction

If you’d gone through the list you would have noticed that most of them are eateries. That’s because, according to a recent scientific study (conducted by me), Singaporeans dine out an average of 12 times a day.

Places on List are Thoroughly Disinfected

You’ve probably decided to order food in for the rest of your life because of this, but there’s no need to panic.

Every time a place is added to the list, the National Environmental Agency (NEA) will work with management to clean and disinfect the area.

Rather, this list is meant to inform those who visited these places to monitor their health in the next couple of weeks.

It only includes places where Covid-19 patients have spent more than 30 minutes while they were infectious.

So, if you’ve been to these places at the specified times, you should monitor their health closely for 14 days from your date of visit. And, of course, see a doctor if you’re unwell.

One Community Case Reported Yesterday

MOH gave us some good news yesterday, as only one out of the 40 new infections reported yesterday (1 Sep) was in the community.

32 migrant workers in dormitories and 7 imported cases made up the remaining 39.

The sole community case – a 24-year-old work pass holder – is unlinked, however.

The woman, who was asymptomatic, was detected through MOH’s rostered routine testing of workers in the construction, marine and process sectors who are living outside the dormitories.

This routine testing is certainly coming in handy.

The seven imported cases have all been placed on stay-home notices upon their arrival in Singapore.

While the number of unlinked community cases has remained stable at an average of one case daily in the past two weeks, the number of new community cases has increased from an average of two to three daily in the past week.

This may seem like a small bump, but we need to remain cautious. Give Covid-19 an inch and it’ll take a yard.

Covid-19: I feel like people only say bad things about me

In short, don’t try and test the system like what these restaurants did. Rather unsuccessfully, I might add.