Singapore— For a whole week, Madam Tan Poh Choo, 70, lived in fear, believing she had Covid-19 and would have to be separated from her family.
She had gone to My Family Clinic in St George’s Road in June and this was the clinic that mistakenly told her on Oct 2 that she had tested positive for the coronavirus.
In fact, the test that came out positive had been done at the clinic for another patient with the same name.
Madam Tan had no symptoms, and had not visited the clinic since June. So she was completelay blindsided and scared when she received ra message on Oct 2 telling her she was infected.
After the clinic sent her that initial “positive” message on Oct 2, staff from the clinic called her two days later to say that they had made a mistake but it took a whole week before Madam Tan was officially informed on Oct 9 that she was not infected.
The Straits Times (ST) reported on Oct 19 that she was shocked at being told she had Covid-19, and when she was called on Oct 5 and told that she needed to isolate, she became so anxious that she started crying.
She told Shin Min Daily News, “I didn’t want to leave my family but I was more worried of being alone by myself in an isolation facility.”
Madam Tan was also afraid of what her neighbours might think if they saw her being taken away to an isolation facility by healthcare workers
In the time between receiving the wrong message learning it was meant for someone with the same name, she “spent a week in fear.”
Until she was cleared, she never left the two-room HDB flat where she lives with her husband, as under the initiall notification, she was required not to leave the premises.
Even after she was told it was all a case of mistaken identity and she got the all-clear, the test status on her TraceTogether did not get cleared until Oct 11, fully nine days after My Family Clinic made the orgiinal mistake
Nevertheless, she was relieved.
My Family Clinic told ST that it took the matter seriously. It said the incident involving Madam Tan was “a regrettable error…due to the mix-up of identical names and heavy patient load during this period of time.”
The clinic said that when it realised that it had made a mistake, it called the Ministry of Health’s Case Management Task Group at once to correct it.
Staff from the clinic visited Madam Tan three times at her home “as a form of support and (to render) assistance in managing inquiries”, it said. /TISG