In the wake of a tragic incident involving a 14-year-old student from the Singapore Sports School, Pranav Madhaik, who passed away after feeling unwell during a fitness time trial, there has been speculation regarding the role of COVID-19 vaccination in his untimely demise.

On 14 October, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has since swiftly refuted the speculations and called them “untrue and irresponsible”, according to Channel NewsAsia.

The Tragic Incident

On October 5, Pranav Madhaik, a Secondary 2 student at the Singapore Sports School, participated in a 400m fitness time trial. Unfortunately, he fell ill during the event.

The school, following an investigation, revealed that Pranav’s cause of death was cardiac arrest with an antecedent cause of congenital malformation of coronary vessels.

This tragic event was, in fact, a result of a pre-existing medical condition and not connected to his recent COVID-19 vaccination.

MOH response

According to the Ministry of Health, Pranav had received his last dose of Pfizer-BioNTech’s Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine more than 18 months ago. This information underscores the point that his vaccination played no role in his tragic demise.

MOH added that about 60 strokes and heart attacks happen every day, with or without COVID-19 vaccinations. It is highly irresponsible to link the two, and that for unvaccinated persons, the risk of covid infection leading to severe illness far outweighs that of someone who is vaccinated.

Timeline of events

On 5 Oct 2023, Pranav Madhaik, a 14-year-old student-athlete of the Singapore Sports School Badminton academy, completed a 400m fitness time trial at around 1826hrs. Timetrials and conditioning sessions are a regular part of student-athletes’ training plans.

Pranav went to the Badminton coach and reported that he felt unwell. The coach told him to rest as he had previously reported being unwell but recovered after resting.

Pranav rested at the side of the starting point while the Badminton coach attended to the time-trial data on his phone. He subsequently left the track to brief other student-athletes on competition matters, not realising that Pranav was still resting at the same location. The coach then left the school premises after the briefing.

While Pranav was resting, he interacted with two other groups of student-athletes that walked by. A few of them approached him and, according to their accounts, did not notice anything unusual with Pranav at the time. The last group interacted with Pranav at around 1835hrs.

At around 1840hrs, a Track and Field coach who was walking by noticed Pranav at the side of the track and approached him to enquire about his condition. The Track and Field coach asked a student-athlete to get water for Pranav. When the student-athlete returned with water, he made another trip to get cold water at Pranav’s request. Subsequently, after the coach assessed that Pranav had difficulty getting up even with help from other student-athletes, he activated the school’s Boarding staff to assist at 1845hrs as the Boarding premises were close by.

An ambulance was called at about 1850hrs and Boarding staff called Pranav’s parents at 1853hrs.

The ambulance arrived at about 1902hrs and conveyed Pranav to the National University Hospital at about 1919hrs, with the Badminton coach who had returned to accompany Pranav. Pranav was warded and given medical care. He passed away on 11 Oct The cause of death was cardiac arrest with antecedent cause of congenital malformation of coronary vessels

Findings from investigation

It was found that the Badminton coach should have checked on Pranav to ensure his well-being before leaving the track. He did not account for all his student-athletes before dismissing them from training, which was not in accordance with the school’s safety protocols.

The Singapore Sports School takes this matter seriously. The coach has been served a notice of dismissal. The School is also reviewing and strengthening all its safety protocols and emphasised to coaches and staff the importance of adhering to them.

Singapore Sports School has met with the parents of Pranav on the evening of 13 Oct and shared with them the findings above. The School extends our deepest condolences to the family of Pranav, and is supporting the family in their time of grief.

DBS Bank services, among other online services, faced a lengthy outage yesterday (14 October) which resulted in a number of inconvenient situations for many users across Singapore.

Banking services such as iBanking, Paynow, Paylah, Paywave and Visa transactions were all down, and even physical ATMs were reported to be offline during the outages.

Earlier this morning, at about 9.25am, DBS issued a statement announcing that all of their banking services have since resumed to normal.

They earlier revealed last night that the service disruption was caused by an issue at their data centre.

DBS’s latest statement

[Update – 9.25am, 15 Oct 2023]

All our services, including DBS/POSB digibank and DBS PayLah!, have returned to normal as of this morning.

However, any customer who may still experience difficulties logging into their accounts via their mobile app can try to log in with digibank online/ internet banking using SMS OTP.

We are also aware that some of our customers’ PayNow/FAST transactions were interrupted when the disruption happened, and will be processing these with utmost priority. We will update customers on the status of these transactions when processing has been completed.

We appreciate our customers’ patience and are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Statements last night

[Update – 10.10pm, 14 Oct 2023]

As we continue our service recovery, we would like to update our customers on the following:

• All our ATMs are now up and running

• Our branches, which were re-activated this afternoon to assist customers, are now closed.

• Some services, including DBS/POSB digibank and DBS PayLah!, remain unavailable and we continue to work to recover them.

The service disruption was caused by an issue at a data centre. The data centre provider, Equinix, has issued a statement on the incident (which affected various organisations) and is conducting a thorough investigation.

We will provide more updates as the recovery progresses. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to all our customers.

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[Update – 6.08pm, 14 Oct 2023]

Our investigations indicate that the service disruption was caused by an issue at a data centre which is also being used by various other organisations.

We are doing our utmost to swing over to our backup data centre, and expect to progressively restore services from 7pm today.

Meanwhile, all our branches (except Tampines Central, Tampines One and White Sands*) have been re-activated and are now open to assist you. Our branch locations can be found here: https://www.dbs.com.sg/index/locator.page

We seek your patience as we recover our services.

Please be assured that our systems are uncompromised, and your monies and deposits remain safe.

*POSB Tampines Central and DBS Tampines One are being relocated, while POSB White Sands is currently under refurbishment.

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[Update – 4.37pm, 14 Oct 2023]

Our customers are not able to access our banking services for the time being. We seek your patience while we actively work to resolve the issue.

We are reactivating our branches to assist you with your transaction requests

Please be assured that our systems are uncompromised. We will provide updates here as soon as they become available.

We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

A 38-year-old Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officer is set to face charges in court stemming from a tragic incident that unfolded on December 8 last year, resulting in the death of a full-time national serviceman (NSF), Sergeant Edward H Go, who was just 19 years old at the time of his death, according to TODAY.

The Tragic Incident

On that fateful day at Block 91 Henderson Road, a fire broke out, posing a significant threat to the residents. Sergeant Edward H Go, an SCDF NSF, was at the forefront of the firefighting efforts.

What makes this incident particularly disturbing is that his superior, a 38-year-old SCDF officer, allegedly left Edward alone in the housing unit to battle the ongoing fire without telling anyone, which goes against the SCDF’s firefighting doctrine.

The Charges

The police have investigated this incident thoroughly and have decided to charge the 38-year-old officer with causing grievous hurt by a rash act that endangers the life or personal safety of others.

The consequences for such an act can be severe, with a possible jail term of up to four years or a fine of up to S$10,000, or both.

The SCDF’s Response

In response to this incident, the SCDF has also taken action against another officer. This second officer allegedly failed to ensure the overall safety of the firefighting operation when he assumed command and control of the incident.

SCDF Commissioner Eric Yap has stated that a thorough investigation will be conducted in this case, and if any lapses are found, firm and fair disciplinary actions will be taken.

Recap

On 8 December 2022, SCDF was alerted to a fire at 91 Henderson Road at around 11.10am. During the firefighting operation, CPL Edward H Go (吴宏澤), 19, fell unconscious in the kitchen area. He was brought out of the unit and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation was administered on him. An SCDF ambulance crew at the scene also used the automated external defibrillator on him and conveyed him to Singapore General Hospital. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

CPL Edward enlisted with the SCDF to serve his National Service on 5 January 2022. He began his 12 weeks of training as a firefighter on 3 February 2022 and completed his training on 28 April 2022. Prior to enlistment, CPL Edward was certified medically fit and assessed to be of Physical Employment Standards’ (PES) ‘A’. After completing his Firefighter Course, CPL Edward was posted to Central Fire Station on 4 May 2022. Since his posting to the fire station, he had responded to more than 20 fire and rescue incidents.

SCDF frontline units comprise regulars, Full-time National Servicemen (NSFs) and Operationally Ready National Servicemen (ORNSmen), all of whom are trained to carry out roles as Rota Commanders, Section Commanders or Firefighters. In a fire or rescue emergency, officers of these vocations form a composite crew to respond to the incident. All the training for these different roles and responsibilities are carried out centrally at the Civil Defence Academy through various firefighting and rescue courses.

CPL Edward was part of the first response crew for the fire incident on 8 December 2022. SCDF officers, like CPL Edward, put their lives on the line each time they enter the scene of a fire in order to save others.

SCDF is deeply saddened by the death of CPL Edward. He is our first colleague to have fallen during an operation. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, and are providing them with our fullest support. With the agreement of the family, we will be holding a ceremonial funeral to honour CPL Edward H Go.