Police monitored a large crowd that gathered yesterday outside the Chinese embassy after it ordered that all China-bound travelers be tested for COVID-19.
Dozens of people on Tuesday were seen outside the embassy on Tanglin Road, with a police car parked across the street where other people stood. While the police have not released a statement on the matter, they appeared on tape to be monitoring the situation. No action appeared to have been taken place.
On video, the gathering appeared calm in contrast to a Bloomberg report this morning that described a “raucous crowd” of angry travelers outside the building, some of whom complained that they could not get tested for COVID-19 at local hospitals.
The Chinese embassy on Friday ordered travelers departing for China to produce a certificate proving they had tested negative for COVID-19. The new rule goes into effect Friday, but travelers were told to submit their certificates within five days prior to departure.
The new rule came days after 14 infected passengers arrived in Tianjin, China, last week on a Scoot flight from Singapore. Singapore’s Health Ministry has since told reporters that 12 of them were recovered patients who were no longer infectious, but did not provide details for two of the cases.
This morning, travelers who booked Scoot flight TR100 bound for Guangzhou, China, queued up at the former Shuqun Secondary School for COVID-19 testing ahead of Sunday’s flight. The low-cost Singapore airline had earlier sent email alerts to those passengers, an unknown number of which ended up spamming other customers. The company has said it was a victim of human error and not hackers.
In a late-night update, Scoot said it had “erroneously sent to a distribution list containing customers who have travelled with Scoot in the past, or who have future bookings with Scoot.”
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Scoot says it wasn’t hacked after spamming customers with ‘urgent’ emails
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