A passenger who arrived in Singapore from Turkey on board a Turkish airline tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday (March 5), Singapore's Ministry of Health (MoH) and Ministry of Transport (MoT) said.
Steps taken by the Singapore government
The passenger on board flight TK54 arrived in Singapore on March 3 (Tuesday). The MoH said in a statement late on Wednesday: "Ministry of Health has started contact tracing for flight passengers who may have had contact with the case while the case was infectious".
All 220 passengers were tested for the virus. Some were allotted hotel rooms, while Singaporean passengers went home, according to local media reports.
In a separate statement, the Ministry of Transport (MoT) said flight TK54 that was scheduled to leave on Wednesday, at 11:35 pm, did not take off at its scheduled time. The ministry, along with the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and the Changi Airport Group, are in contact with and assisting the airline and passengers, Channel News Asia (CNA) reported.
The flight left Changi Airport early on Thursday at 2:10 a.m. [Local Time] without any passengers. The crew on board will be quarantined in Istanbul.
Also, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is in close contact with the Turkish embassy in Singapore.
Number of Covid-19 cases in Singapore
The country confirmed its first case of coronavirus infection on Jan. 23 in a 66-year old Chinese woman from Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak. Till now, the country has reported 112 cases with no known fatalities.
Covid-19 has spread to over 60 countries in every continent, except Antarctica. Most of the cases have been reported in the Chinese mainland, with 80,409 cases and 3,012 fatalities. While cases are declining in China, they're surging in other parts of the world, with South Korea (5,755 cases, 35 fatalities), Italy (3,089 cases, 107 fatalities) and Iran (2,922 cases, 92 fatalities), emerging as new centers of the outbreak.
