Exhibition venue sponsored by MGTO
The preface of a COVID-19-themed exhibition sparked social media criticism yesterday for wrongly claiming that the city’s first novel coronavirus patient was a local resident studying in the US who returned to Macau on January 16.
The preface went viral on social media yesterday as netizens rushed to point out – with photos of news clippings – that the government confirmed the first case of the virus on January 22, and that the first patient in Macau was a 52-year-old woman from Wuhan.
However, the Chinese-language preface said that Macau “closed the city [borders]” on January 18, after – supposedly – the confirmation of the city’s first patient – “a 20-year-old local woman returning from the US where she studies, arriving in Macau via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge on January 16.”
It went on to say that when Macau closed its borders, residents scrambled to buy facemasks, and so “as I was a photojournalist at Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post”, he decided to capture the city under epidemic prevention so that “people won’t forget this disaster in history.”
The preface did not mention the author’s name, but a guest-signing poster on display on the reception table yesterday is titled “Yau Tin Kuai’s testimony of the achievements of Macau citizens together preventing and tackling the virus photo exhibition”. However, the exhibition does not reveal who Yau Tin Kuai is.
The exhibition, currently taking place at the Macau Government Tourism Office’s (MGTO) Ritz Building exhibition hall in Largo do Senado in the city centre, is organised by a local “photographic art association”, sponsored by Melco Resorts & Entertainment Chairman Lawrence Ho Yau-lung, while MGTO sponsored the venue, according to the credits list at the exhibition.
When asked about the exhibition, MGTO spokesperson Lau Fong Chi told reporters at a regular press conference on the novel coronavirus situation yesterday that her office removed the preface at the exhibition hall once it learnt that the content sparked “public attention”.
Lau also pointed out that the bureau only provided the venue for the association and did not grant any funding to it.
The opening ceremony of the exhibition was held last Saturday. The exhibition features 84 photos of Macau during the virus outbreak. The exhibition is slated to run until next Thursday. MGTO Director Maria Helena de Senna Fernandes attended last Saturday’s opening ceremony.
