Jailed: MOH officer who leaked daily COVID case numbers to WeChat group

SINGAPORE — A Ministry of Health (MOH) officer who leaked the number of daily positive COVID-19 cases to a chat group had played a "guess-the-number" game with the other 49 members in the group.

Zhao Zheng would congratulate the member who came closest to guessing the case number. On some occasions, she would gift the “winner” with RMB1 (S$0.20) for good luck.

Zhao, 37, was jailed for 18 weeks on Tuesday (22 February) after she pleaded guilty to 11 counts under the Official Secrets Act for leaking the information, and one count under the Computer Misuse Act for unauthorised access to information about a positive COVID-19 case.

Another 12 counts of a similar nature were considered for her sentencing.

Revealed daily numbers and additional details to WeChat group

Zhao had been an assistant director of the biostatistics and research branch of MOH's public health division before the pandemic struck.

Following the onset of the pandemic, she was deployed to be the deputy lead of the Data Management Unit (DMU), which was set up by MOH to deal with the pandemic. Her position allowed her access to information including profiles of those who tested positive for COVID-19. She also had access to a spreadsheet which collated the total number of cases for a given day before it was released to the public.

Zhao and a co-accused - Tang Lin, 36 - had been part of a WeChat group containing 50 members.

As early as 16 March 2020, Zhao began revealing the number of confirmed cases to the group-chat members, but told them not to spread the information. She would also share additional details, such as how many cases were from foreigners who entered Singapore.

On some days, Zhao played a game with the other members, who would guess how many confirmed cases there were before the daily figure was released. She would then reveal the actual figure, congratulate the member who came close to guessing it, and would also send the winner RMB1 as a good-luck gift.

Over a month, Zhao shared the daily numbers over 20 times.

The group was disbanded after 16 April 2020, when the moderator of the group received information that the daily number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was being shared beyond the members.

On 18 April 2020, the head of MOH”s case reporting team lodged a police report stating that MOH suspected the daily number of cases for 14, 15 and 16 April had been leaked.

Apart from leaking the daily figures, Zhao had also revealed details of a positive case in Tang's condominium to Tang. Tang had found out that someone residing at her condo had COVID-19, and asked Zhao in a private message as she knew that Zhao was working in MOH.

Zhao accessed her government-issued laptop to search for the case details in the spreadsheet. She searched for the address of Tang’s condo and shared details of the case with Tang, such as the fact that it was an imported case.

She also answered further queries from Tang, such as when the case had returned to Singapore, and whether the case’s family was still in the condo for quarantine. Zhao also told Tang that the person had been admitted to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases.

Tang was fined $10,000 in August last year after she pleaded guilty to five charges under the Official Secrets Act.

Resources redirected to deal with consequences of leak: prosecution

The prosecution sought a jail term of six to nine months’ for Zhao, describing her as “cavalier” with the information.

The leak caused “various public agencies involved in the fight against COVID-19 to redirect resources to deal with the consequences of the leak”, said the prosecution.

It added, “Given the inter-agency cooperation of Singapore’s fight against COVID-19, multiple agencies, including MOH and enforcement agencies, expended resources assessing whether the leaks were true, which systems or files it had originated from, who had access to the files and who it had originated from, who had received the leaked information… this was extremely time consuming given the viral nature of the information spread, and this had to be done concurrently with their attempts to fight the pandemic. Resources had to be spent to ensure that further leaks of information would not take place."

The premature release of the such sensitive data could have possibly caused panic to the population and caused overcrowding at supermarkets, said the prosecution.

Zhao’s lawyer Diana Ngiam told the court that her client had misjudged due to her circumstances. Zhao was diagnosed to be suffering from Adjustment Disorder with mixed anxiety and depressed mood at the time. She had been working long and stressful hours to manage the data, which took a toll on her mental well-being.

“Our client unfortunately made the mistake of turning to this support group as an avenue to rant, and to unleash some of the stress she was undergoing at the time," Ngiam added.

The group chat that Zhao had been a part of had been a support group for mothers, whom Zhao had empathised with, as she was herself a mother of three.

“Our client’s motivation was to do what she could, as a mother, to assuage the fear and uncertainty amongst the other mothers in the WeChat group," Ngiam said.

"Our client mistakenly thought she could lighten the mood by occasionally making the sharing of COVID-19 numbers as a game, as it was a time of heightened emotions and stress for all. This is a clear mistake and our client is sincerely sorry."

Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore