Two elderly cleaners working at Northpoint City have been infected because the Singapore government refused to shut down the shopping mall despite having identified it as a cluster on April 25.
The two Singaporean men, aged 60 and 77 years old, were told to continue working at the shopping mall despite having three cleaners infected on April 14 and 15.
Northpoint shopping mall is still open today, unlike Mustafa Centre, which was also identified as a cluster and forced to shut down for a month.
Elderly patients is a high risk group with fatality rate as high as 20% globally, while 18 out of the 20 reported deaths in Singapore are aged 55 and above.
The Singapore government yesterday also reported 9 new clusters, all of them are foreign worker accommodations. Unlike dormitories, foreign worker in accommodations can still leave their home to make purchases in public.
Manpower Minister Josephine Teo earlier in the week admitted that some of the non-dormitory accommodations have very poor conditions and the government has not completed checking all of them yet.