SINGAPORE: A traveller who tested positive for COVID-19 in South Korea may have been infected during transit at Singapore’s airport, New Zealand’s Ministry of Health said on Monday (Jul 27).

The traveller left New Zealand on Jul 21 and arrived in South Korea the next day after transiting through Singapore. The person showed no symptoms but tested positive for the coronavirus upon arrival in South Korea.

“South Korean authorities have informed us that based on their initial investigations they suspect the traveller was infected during the transit in Singapore airport,” the New Zealand health ministry said on Monday.

“However other causes, including infection in New Zealand, can’t be ruled out at this stage so the ministry is in close contact with South Korea and is expecting further information from the authorities later today New Zealand time.”

In May, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS) said Singapore will gradually allow travellers to transit through Changi Airport from Jun 2.

Passengers flying through Changi Airport will be directed to new transit holding areas in Terminals 1 and 3 to provide a “safe environment for all passengers and airport workers”, said Changi Airport Group (CAG) on Jun 11.

READ: Safety measures in new transit holding areas in Changi Airport

Singapore Airlines (SIA) also announced on that day that SIA and SilkAir passengers flying from Auckland and Christchurch in New Zealand will be allowed to transit through Changi Airport.

CAG said the holding areas will be disinfected regularly and temperature taking will be conducted at the entrances. Transit passengers with a high temperature or who appear or feel unwell will be given medical attention.

All passengers must wear a face mask and adhere to the safe distancing markers.

Airport staff members in transit holding areas are required to wear face masks, face shields and gloves, and will also have their temperatures taken before entering the area.

Contactless hand sanitisers, automatic water taps and doors equipped with sensors in restrooms are available in the transit holding areas, CAG had said.

All restrooms, seats and chairs are regularly cleaned and disinfected. 

“Frequently touched surfaces such as charging stations, tables and playgrounds have been sprayed with a long-lasting anti-microbial disinfectant coating that reduces the risk of virus transmission,” said CAG.

CNA has contacted CAG, CAAS and the Ministry of Health for more information.

There have been 1,206 COVID-19 cases in New Zealand, the health ministry said.

“It has now been 87 days since the last case of COVID-19 was acquired locally from an unknown source,” the media release said.

“There are no new recovered cases today, which means the total number of active cases in New Zealand’s managed isolation and quarantine facilities remains at 21. There is no one in New Zealand receiving hospital-level care for COVID-19.”

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SINGAPORE: Scientists at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have discovered a way to improve the speed of obtaining COVID-19 test results by up to four times.

The improved testing method for COVID-19 yields results in 36 minutes – about a quarter of the time required by existing gold-standard tests. The current testing method requires highly trained technical staff and can take a few hours before results are finalised.

NTU said on Monday (Jul 27) the test can be done with portable equipment and could be deployed in the community as a screening tool.

Testing is a key part of the Singapore Government’s strategy to isolate and ring-fence COVID-19 cases to prevent large clusters from forming. Since Jul 1, individuals aged 13 and older who present with symptoms of acute respiratory infection will be tested for COVID-19 at first presentation to a doctor.

READ: COVID-19: From Jul 1, patients aged 13 and above with acute respiratory infection to undergo testing once they visit a doctor

The new method, developed by scientists at NTU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, has demonstrated a way to improve “the speed, handling time and cost of COVID-19 laboratory tests”, the university said.

Currently, the most sensitive method of testing for the coronavirus is through a laboratory technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR), where a machine amplifies genetic material by copying it over and over again so any trace of the coronavirus can be detected.

A big problem is purifying the ribonucleic acid (RNA) from other components in the patient sample – a process that requires chemicals that are now “in short supply worldwide”, NTU said.

READ: COVID-19: MOH conducting ‘swab operations’ as part of stepped up efforts

“The method developed by NTU LKCMedicine combines many of these steps and allows direct testing on the crude patient sample, cutting down the turnaround time from sample-to-result, and removing the need for RNA purification chemicals,” the university added.

PCR tests have proven to be “a workhorse” for biological research but it has some drawbacks, said Mr Wee Soon Keong, who is the first author of the research paper that has been published in the scientific journal Genes.

“The process is fiddly and time-consuming. Our rapid COVID-19 test involves a single-tube reaction that reduces hands-on time and biosafety risk for lab personnel, as well as the likelihood for carryover contamination during the processing of samples,” he added.

The same method can also be used to detect other viruses and bacteria, including dengue. The number of dengue cases this year is set to surpass the 22,170 cases in 2013 – Singapore’s worst outbreak.

THE NEW METHOD

In PCR tests, the genetic material on the swab sample has to be extracted to remove substances in the sample that prevent the test from working. One example of an inhibitor is mucin, a main component of mucus.

The test designed by the NTU team uses the “direct PCR method”, but removes the need for RNA purification – a time-consuming and costly step.

“Instead, they added inhibitor-resistant enzymes and reagents targeting compounds that obstruct RNA amplification, such as mucin … these enzymes and reagents, which are commercially available, have high resistance to such compounds that otherwise inhibit PCR, rendering the test inaccurate,” said NTU.

READ: All foreign workers to be tested by mid-August, says COVID-19 task force

The biochemical mix of crude sample and inhibitor-resistant enzymes and reagents is placed into a single tube, which is inserted into a laboratory thermocycler, a machine used to amplify genetic material in PCR. After 36 minutes, results reveal whether there is any trace of COVID-19 “with confidence”.

The team also tested this method on a portable thermocycler, which can be deployed in low-resource settings and endemic areas, pointing to the possibility of having this test done in community healthcare settings by frontline healthcare workers.

Senior research fellow Dr Sivalingam Paramalingam Suppiah said: “By skipping the RNA extraction step with our direct-PCR method, we see cost savings on nucleic acid extraction kits, and avoid the problem of reagents in short supply when lab testing is ramped up and the demand increases globally.”

Associate Professor Eric Yap, leader of the research team, said the team is now trying to deploy such methods for routine diagnostics.

“We need to determine the actual utility and benefits in a real-world setting, and to understand if there are any trade-offs. When one bottleneck is removed, other challenges may emerge – like ensuring quality control, or reducing manual errors.

“Our goal is to develop ultrafast and automated tests that yield results in minutes, and that can be performed by healthcare workers in the clinic with similar accuracy and sensitivity as in specialised laboratories,” he added.

“This will allow us to take PCR testing out of conventional laboratories nearer to the point-of-care, and into the low-resource settings that need them the most.”

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SINGAPORE: The National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP) has terminated the PhD candidature of Dickson Yeo Jun Wei with immediate effect, a spokesperson for the school said on Sunday (Jul 26).

Responding to CNA’s queries, the spokesperson said in a statement that this move comes after information released by the US Department of Justice. The statement noted that Yeo has pleaded guilty in the US to one count of acting within the US as an illegal agent of a foreign power.

Yeo enrolled as a PhD student in LKYSPP’s Public Policy programme in 2015. In 2019, he applied for, and was granted, a leave of absence, the spokesperson said.

Checks by CNA showed that while he was a student at LKYSPP, Yeo researched and wrote papers on China’s treatment of small states. He proposed a thesis titled “How does China treat small states of Strategic Value?” According to Yeo’s profile on the Academia website, his thesis proposal was approved in principle by LKYSPP in August 2017. 

READ: Singaporean pleads guilty in US to working for Chinese intelligence

READ: Arrest of Dickson Yeo – Investigations have not revealed any direct threat to Singapore’s security, says MHA

The 29 papers and presentations uploaded online revealed that he was also a visiting researcher at Peking University for International Relations and Public Policy. 

On his profile, Yeo also published a “brief note” on US President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. In the paper, he said Mr Obama’s “main goal” was to “re-establish American economic leadership” while “persecuting the war on terror by not alienating America’s friends”. 

In another paper studying US intervention in Afghanistan, Yeo had concluded that the intervention was “primarily dependent” on “obtaining international support for domestic legitimisation of action” following the 9/11 attacks. 

“This arbitrary definition of legitimacy, once obtained, ignored the principles of self determination and non-intervention,” he wrote. 

FORMER TOP DIPLOMAT LINKS YEO WITH EXPELLED PROFESSOR

In a Facebook post on Saturday, former top Singapore diplomat Bilahari Kausikan said that Yeo’s PhD supervisor at LKYSPP was former LKYSPP Professor Huang Jing. Mr Kausikan did not indicate the source of the information.

Prof Huang was identified in 2017 as an “agent of influence for a foreign country” by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). Without naming the country, MHA said that Prof Huang “knowingly interacted with intelligence organisations and agents of the foreign country, and cooperated with them to influence the Singapore Government’s foreign policy and public opinion in Singapore”. 

Prof Huang gave what he claimed was “privileged information” about the foreign country to prominent and influential Singaporeans, including to a senior member of LKYSPP, with the aim of influencing their opinions in favour of that country, MHA said.

RECRUITED BY CHINESE AGENTS

Yeo pleaded guilty on Friday (Jul 24) to using a fake consultancy business in the United States as a front to collect sensitive US information for Chinese intelligence. He entered his plea in federal court in Washington to one charge of operating illegally as a foreign agent.

READ: How a Singaporean man went from NUS PhD student to working for Chinese intelligence in the US

In his plea, Yeo admitted to working between 2015 and 2019 for Chinese intelligence, spotting and assessing Americans with access to “valuable non-public information”. 

He was recruited by Chinese intelligence operatives and went on to work for them after he went to Beijing to give a presentation on politics. 

Yeo was arrested after he returned to the US in November 2019; upon his return, he had planned to ask an informant for classified information and also reveal whom he was working for, according to court documents. However, he was stopped by US law enforcement agents and arrested after he landed at the airport. 

LAST FACEBOOK POST IN NOVEMBER 2019

According to information from his Facebook page, Yeo was born on Feb 22, 1981. 

On Nov 6, 2019, Yeo posted on Facebook that he was “flying yet again”, and later posted a photo of a boarding counter at a Japanese airport that showed details for an 11.05am flight to John F Kennedy International Airport in New York. 

This was followed by Yeo’s last posts on Facebook on Nov 7, 2019. There were two – first, a post that said “Stressful Day”, and then he shared an inspirational quote from another page. 

Four weeks after his last posts, a friend commented on his “Stressful Day” post: “Dickson, where are you?” 

FAKE CONSULTANCY BUSINESS

In court documents, it is said that Yeo was directed by Chinese intelligence to open up a fake consultancy and offer jobs in the US. 

The fake business bore the same name as a prominent US consulting firm that conducts public and government relations. 

The website of one such company – which has since been taken down – bears Yeo’s name, and what appears to be his email address and Singapore phone number. It was further claimed that the company was “formed as a result of a brain-storm between multiple parties in Singapore and Shanghai”. 

The company also claimed to serve as a “consulting bridge” between “multiple parties” and to offer “in-depth analysis on the risk and market entry issues centered on the Eurasian Region”. 

According to court documents, Yeo received more than 400 resumes, 90 per cent of which were from US military or government personnel with security clearances, and gave his Chinese handlers the resumes that he thought they would find interesting. 

Before becoming a PhD candidate at LKYSPP, Yeo was also an energy analyst at the NUS Energy Studies Institute in 2011.