Penang Couple Gets Wrongly Called Out After Being Seen With Pink Wristbands In Public
Someone even lodged a police report against them.
By May Vin Ang — 05 Aug 2020, 12:53 PM
A couple spotted wearing what was thought to be COVID-19 home quarantine wristbands in public caused a spark of false alarm over the weekend
According to Bernama, the picture of the young man and woman wearing pink wristbands at the Penang Hill parking lot went viral on Facebook and WhatsApp on Sunday, 2 August.
People assumed that they were breaching the Home Surveillance Order (HSO), which is a mandatory two-week quarantine after returning from overseas.
However, after a member of the public lodged a police report against them, the police have since confirmed that they were not persons under surveillance (PUS).
Investigations found that the couple had obtained the wristbands from a dog cafe they had visited earlier in the day
Timur Laut district police chief Assistant Commissioner Soffian Santong said they tracked down the 21-year-old man who is a factory operator and a 22-year-old shop assistant who are both from Butterworth.
"The couple said they had gone to a pet shop at New World Park at 12.30pm on Sunday and the pink wristbands with the words 'Husky And The Gang' were put on them by the employees there," the police chief clarified in a statement yesterday, 4 August.
The duo was called in to assist with the investigation and they admitted that they were the individuals in the viral picture
The couple explained that they had planned to go back to the dog cafe later in the evening and had not taken the wristbands off.
Soffian said they were, however, then mistaken as home quarantine violators and were caught on camera at the Penang Hill funicular train station at around 3pm on Sunday.
The police added that backgrounds checks have also determined that the couple have never been overseas nor were their names in the list of PUS by the Ministry of Health (MOH).
An example of the pink wristbands issued by the MOH to identify PUS for 14 days.
Image via Health Director-General of MalaysiaThe dog cafe told SAYS that they are aware their pink admission bands coincidentally look like the COVID-19 home quarantine wristbands
The bands are given to customers to access the cafe's upper floor where their 10 huskies and one Alaskan Malamute roam away from the other dogs.
In an interview with The Star, the dog cafe's owner was surprised with the commotion as they have been using these pink bands over the last two years with no issue, but would change their colour if urged by authorities.
