Panda cub still sees snaking queues, netizens don’t understand its hype, others fear COVID virus spread

Singapore — Since Le Le, the first panda cub born in Singapore was unveiled to visitors on Thursday (Dec 30), throngs of people have flocked to the Giant Panda Forest at River Wonders.

In a TikTok video uploaded on Monday (Jan 3), people could be seen queuing, as it rained, all the way from the panda enclosure to the River Safari Bridge. The queue of visitors to the panda enclosure spanned more than two-thirds of the bridge.

The seven-second TikTok video now circulating on Facebook as well, showed many families with their children standing in line.

“Le Le is usually out in the nursery at 10.30am and 3.30pm daily. As Le Le is still getting used to being away from mummy, nursery times may vary between 20 and 30 minutes”, an announcement on mandai.com read. Despite this, people were undeterred.

Le Le (叻叻), which garnered more than 31,000 votes in the online poll held from Nov 3 to Nov 7, was the winning name chosen for the Singapore-born giant panda cub.

The word “Le” comes from “Shi Le Po”, which is an ancient Chinese name for Singapore and is used since the country’s beginning as a trading port. It is also a transliteration of the Malay term “selat”, which means straits, indicative of Singapore’s geographical location.

Many who commented on the video were worried that the cluster of people in the queue could potentially lead to the spreading of Covid-19 cases. /TISG