A Turkish Airlines passenger has tested positive, after arriving in Singapore on Tuesday afternoon (3rd March).
This passenger was on-board TK 54 from Istanbul to Singapore. Singapore’s healthy authority is currently doing contact tracing, to identify passengers who may have had close contact with this infected passenger on board the flight.
All three pilots and eleven cabin crew members on-board this flight later returned back to Istanbul on TK55 on Thursday (5th March) with no passengers on board.
This return flight was originally scheduled to depart on Wednesday 23:35; it only departed at 02:08 on Thursday.
Upon arrival to Istanbul, all crew members will be quarantined.
A similar case also happened a week ago, where a passenger on-board Air New Zealand NZ 283 from Singapore to Auckland, on 25th February, later tested positive for the virus.
This passenger was flying home from northern Italy via Singapore. She later also travelled on NZ 5103 from Auckland To Palmerston North and NZ 8114 back to Auckland, on 2nd March.
Effective 4th March (Wednesday) new visitors who have travelled to Iran, northern Italy and South Korea within the past 14 days will not be allowed to enter, or transit, Singapore.
As a Turkish citizen, I’m confused. Because they say there is no coronavirus in our country but that passenger was flying from Istanbul and the test was positive. how?
Either the passenger was transiting through Turkey or there are unreported cases in the country. These are possible assumptions
Interesting – wonder if they stayed away from the return crew onboard the a/c.