Singapore – Long queues of people waited to get swabbed at testing centres and clinics on Wednesday, having come into close contact with Covid-19 cases.
Individuals who had visited Jem, Westgate and White Sands malls received SMS alerts that they had possibly been exposed to Covid-19 cases and needed to go for a swab test.
Some workers were required to take the tests as their workplaces stood a high chance of being infected by the virus.
Our Tampines Hub set up a swabbing site on Wednesday (May 19) after the Ministry of Health asked all its staff, service providers and tenants’ staff to be tested due to the increasing number of potential Covid-19 cases.
Mr Eric Tan, 62, stood in the queue at Our Tampines Hub for two hours waiting for the swab, according to The Straits Times.
“Though I can handle standing in the line this long, other seniors may not be strong enough to do so,” said Mr Tan, who works at the FairPrice supermarket branch in the hub.
Mr Kyle Malinda-White, 29, could not get tested even though he went to a clinic twice on Wednesday.
He reached the OneCare Medical Clinic at Bukit Gombak at 1 pm when there were 40 people in the queue.
The staff asked him to come back for the test at 8 pm.
However, the queue was still there when Mr Malinda-White came back. He was then asked to visit the clinic again at 7.30 am on Thursday.
“I can see the healthcare professionals are really exhausted, so my heart goes out to them first. I’m happy to be back early tomorrow,” said Mr Malinda- White, who visited Westgate on May 14.
Although there was no alert sent to him, he still decided to take the test both for himself and his family to “have peace of mind”.
Several Swab and Send Home (Sash) clinics near the affected malls did more than double the usual number of swab tests on Wednesday.
“This is the most number of swab tests we’ve done in a day since we started doing swab tests in October last year,” said Ms Koh Jia Boon, clinic assistant at Northeast Medical Group.
The Bukit Batok branch normally performs 10 to 20 swabs a day, but did 56 on Wednesday. Among those tested were patients with symptoms of acute respiratory infection.
Some clinics had to order more test kits to cope with the rising demand.
Ms March Yeo, a staff member at Q&M Medical Clinic, shared that a batch of 20 test kits, which were supposed to last a week, ran out in two days.
The Fullerton Health Testing Centre in Raffles City Shopping Centre also had its slots fully booked for Thursday.
A Fullerton Health spokesperson stated, “We work closely with MOH on calibration of capacity and are able to comfortably accommodate (our patients).”
Phuong Le Ha is an intern at The Independent SG/TISG