Online sports betting operators are getting increasingly creative and/or desperate in their search for something on which their customers can wager.

The New Paper reported that Singapore-based bettors are being targeted by internationally licensed online betting sites offering wagers based on select countries – Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia – reporting new COVID-19 coronavirus infections.

The markets on offer aren’t specifically based on how many infections each country reports, but rather on whether the number is even or odd, or whether it’s over or under the previous day’s figure. Bettors can also wager on the last digit of each market’s report, similar to how unauthorized lotteries offer bets on the results of official lotteries in some Asia-Pacific countries.

The sites reportedly emerged in the week following Singapore suspending all gambling – even the online offering of Singapore Pools – through May 4 as a so-called ‘circuit breaker’ to reduce further COVID-19 transmission. Nature abhors a vacuum, after all, and here we are.