Jewel Changi Airport, Terminals 1 and 3 to be closed

[reader]

From Channel News Asia

SINGAPORE: Jewel Changi Airport as well as Terminals 1 and 3 will be closed to members of the public from Thursday (May 13) for 14 days after a COVID-19 cluster with 25 cases was identified there.

All workers in Terminals 1 and 3, as well as Jewel Changi Airport have been undergoing mandatory COVID-19 tests in a special testing operation that began on Sunday. Terminal 2 has been closed since May 1, 2020.

While the special testing operation is ongoing, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) and Changi Airport Group (CAG) said on Wednesday that the passenger terminals buildings will be closed to members of the public from Thursday.

As a precaution, passenger terminal buildings will be reopened 14 days later on May 27. Jewel will also be closed for 14 days, said the authorities.

Changi Airport remains open for air travel during this period, said CAAS and CAG, adding that passengers may also continue to be dropped off and picked up from the airport.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid-19-jewel-changi-airport-terminals-1-3-closed-public-14795582

[PeterRS]

For the life of me I totally fail to understand why groups of workers who interact with a large number of other people, often from other countries, had not been routinely tested many moons ago. After its experience with the huge cluster amongst immigrant worker dormitories just as the government was assuming it had been so effective in its covid actions, I'd have thought testing of airport workers would have been an absolute priority in Singapore. It's the same in Taiwan where authorities clearly turned a blind eye to employees of its national airline who were flying in and out of the country regularly.

Come to that, Thailand cannot be let off the hook either. Although successive governments were fully aware over many, many years that the fish market in Samut Sakhon employed thousands of Burmese workers, about half illegally, yet they decided to keep turning a blind eye to the fact that many of these workers quite regularly slipped over the porous border when it should have been testing everyone. At a time when countries should have been at their most vigilant with virus variants rising rapidly, why they sat back complacently totally beats me.