We finally got our visas today. All praises to God and congrats to all who got theirs too. It was worth the wait.
For those who like us, in spite of nominating CEM as VO got transferred to SG VO for processing, it seems that SG VO for our case(being part of the FSW backlog reduction program) beat the expected timelines despite the setback of the strike.
For info of others having difficulties with accessing ECAS, our experience is that when there is a major update, for example before a PPR or additional processing line of OWP, there could be intermittent down time in access but you'll eventually get it back (for us it was about a week).
Cheers everyone and happy holidays