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A former Ministry of Health (MOH) employee misused her access to the numbers of daily Covid-19 cases in Singapore, spreading the confidential information via a chat group ahead of the official announcement.
She did this on several occasions in March and April 2020, at times inviting chat group participants to guess the number of daily cases as part of a game.
Zhao, a 37-year-old Singaporean, was sentenced to 18 weeks' jail today (Feb. 22), CNA reported.
She had earlier pleaded guilty to 12 charges under the Official Secrets Act.
Was part of MOH data management unit set up to tackle Covid-19
At the time of her offences, Zhao had been given access to the confidential information via the MOH intranet, as part of her job as the deputy lead of the ministry's data management unit.
The unit had been set up as part of MOH's Covid-19 efforts.
Zhao was able to access the number of new Covid-19 cases in Singapore on a given day before the official release by MOH, through a spreadsheet titled "master" which contained the personal information of individual Covid-19 cases.
Zhao also had access to other data on these individuals, as well as their movements and activity patterns.
Shared case numbers in WeChat group
Zhao shared the number of new Covid-19 cases in a private chat group, involving 49 other members who were mothers.
She would also share other details of the daily Covid-19 cases, such as how many cases were imported.
She told them that they should not spread the information she shared, knowing that she was not supposed to have shared it.
She even allowed chat group participants to guess the number, and occasionally sent rewards of 1 yuan (S$0.21) to the person with the closest guess.
Zhao's case had been highlighted in media reports previously, as one of two women who faced charges under the Official Secrets Act and Computer Misuse Act.
The other woman, 36-year-old Singaporean Tang Lin, was also a member of that chat group.
She was fined S$10,000 on Aug. 20, 2021.
According to CNA, Zhao had obtained confidential information upon Tang's request, as Tang wanted to find out more about a Covid-19 case at her condominium.
Police report in Apr. 2020
According to CNA, the head of MOH's Case Reporting Team lodged a police report on Apr. 18, 2020. The report stated the ministry's suspicion that the number of Covid-19 cases for a few days in April 2020 had been leaked.
In court, prosecutors said that Zhao's actions caused public agencies to redirect resources to address the consequences of the leaked information.
Multiple agencies were affected by this, as they had to assess whether information had in fact been leaked, and if so, who had leaked the information.
It was also said that public service agencies had to adjust their approach during the investigation, by ringfencing certain processes, which impacted the speed of information between agencies.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Joshua Lim, seeking a jail sentence of six to nine months, pointed out the implications of daily case numbers being leaked.
On some days, Zhao had leaked case numbers for days just before the circuit breaker, and during the first few days of the period of wide-ranging restrictions.
Lim pointed out that such "sensitive information" needed to be made public in a manner that would not cause panic among the population.
Such panic, he said, could be seen in the form of supermarket crowds, which in turn created heightened risk of Covid-19 transmission.
He said that Zhao had been "cavalier" about the data leaks, as seen by the fact that she played a guessing game in the chat group, and leaked information on many occasions, CNA reported.
Lawyer: Zhao empathised with mothers in WeChat group
According to CNA, Zhao's defence lawyer, Diana Ngiam from Quahe Woo and Palmer, pointed to Zhao's position as a deputy lead who put in long hours to manage Covid-19 data while managing a team, and being a mother of three young children.
Ngiam said that Zhao "empathised" with her fellow mothers who were worried about the Covid-19 situation and did not intend for the information to be shared outside of the group.
Ngiam explained that Zhao had intended to ease the group's fears, and "mistakenly" tried to "lighten the mood" by making a game out of the Covid-19 numbers.
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Top photo by Alex Ware on Unsplash
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