Spa Outlet in East Coast Explains How a COVID-19 Customer Spread the Virus to 5 Staff Members

If you want a classic example of how contagious the coronavirus is, look no further than a spa outlet in East Coast.

Natureland Group is a popular massage and therapy spa chain, with 7 outlets in Singapore. It has closed all outlets since 7 April 2020 due to the Circuit Breaker measures, and is expected to reopen them from 2 June 2020.

In the meantime, you can buy vouchers at a discount during this period that’ll expire at the end of this year.

But despite its closure, it was announced as a cluster two days ago.

Why?

Well, they’ve spoken.

Spa Outlet in East Coast Explains How a COVID-19 Customer Spread the Virus to 5 Staff Members

Apparently, it all started back in March. To be specific, 19 March 2020.

A customer, a Vietnamese EP holder, visited the East Coast outlet that day. The spa chain has progressively included precautionary measures since 1 February 2020, and by 17 March, all their staff even had to take temperatures of all customers and kept a one-metre distance from each other.

In addition, every staff member had to wear a mask back then.

On 1 April 2020, they received a call from MOH. It turns out that the Vietnamese EP holder has tested positive for COVID-19 even when he had no symptoms when he visited the outlet.

The therapist who served him was put on Leave of Absence for just one day, as it would have been 14 days since the customer visited.

However, upon testing of the staff, 5 other staff members (not the one who served the customer) were tested positive between 9 April to 21 April 2020, which led to the outlet being declared a cluster.

All the staff in the outlet has been on quarantine from 7 April 2020 to 21 April 2020, though it makes no difference lah since we’re all now on quarantine, too.

The chance of the Vietnamese EP holder spreading the coronavirus to the infected patients might seem very likely, do remember that a test in New York also showed that 1 in 5 people might have been infected without them knowing, though that test might not be 100% accurate.

So stay at home because you never know if you’re infected.