The Covid-19 outbreak isn’t just threatening people’s lives, it’s threatening their livelihoods too.
Hotels, taxi and private-hire drivers, food businesses; and now, shopping malls and entertainment outlets are feeling the heat too.
Entertainment Outlets & Shopping Malls Report Losses
At Party World KTV, the number of patrons they receive has dropped by 50 per cent.
Downtown East is predicting a smaller crowd of about 25,000 people at their upcoming food festival, Eatbox.
Department store OG also reported a 30% drop in tourist arrivals. In addition, they also said they have an “even more severe decline” in sales and human traffic.
Independent cinema, The Projector, also reported a 30% drop in attendance. A spokesperson for the cinema says it hopes their fans and community will support them through this difficult period.
Shorter Operating Hours
To help tenants tide over the difficult period, mall operator Capitaland is allowing businesses to operate shorter hours.
They’re also putting out a $10 million marketing assistance program to help drive both retailer-driven marketing and mall-wide marketing initiatives like free lunch-hour parking and free booking of atrium spaces for events.
Departmental store OG is now closing an hour earlier as well.
Taking More Precautions Against Covid-19 Virus
Besides shorter operating hours, businesses in Singapore are also taking every precaution to prevent the spread of Covid-19 on their premises.
For Party World KTV, every microphone is placed into a steriliser overnight. Customers also need to have their temperature taken before they can enter the premises.
Hand sanitizers are also available for use within the outlets.
For Downtown East, they will have ambulances and medical personnel on standby throughout the food festival’s duration.
Golden Village (GV) has removed it’s “no single seat gap” policy. Cinemagoers can now choose to leave a space between themselves and others if they wish to.
A spokesperson for GV added that they are “optimistic” that the situation will improve as the “government and community” work together.
Current Coronavirus Outbreak Situation in Singapore
There are 8 new confirmed Covid-19 cases in Singapore but they’re all linked to previous cases, so they’re not infections of unknown origins.
The number of clusters remained the same.
15 patients have fully recovered and are discharged. 7 of them are in critical condition in the intensive care unit.
This means a patient is out of ICU, as there were 8 patients who were in critical condition in the intensive care unit on 12 Feb 2020.
The other remaining patients’ conditions are stable or improving.
As of noon today, 82 cases are still pending.
MOH has identified 1,278 close contacts, and 1,161 of them are still in Singapore. 1,144 of them have been contacted while MOH is still trying to contact the remaining 17 close contacts.
Do bookmark MOH’s website for the latest update.
