Yahoo Finance COVID-19: 5 new cases in Singapore, MOH investigating 1 for Mandarin Orchard link
SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Health (MOH) has confirmed the detection of five new cases of COVID-19 infection in Singapore as of noon on Sunday (27 December), taking the country’s total case count to 58,524.
All the new cases are imported and have been placed on Stay-Home Notice (SHN) upon their arrival in Singapore, said the ministry in a news release. There are no new cases of locally transmitted COVID-19 infection.
Among the five imported cases, one (Case 58763) is a Singapore permanent resident who returned from Ukraine. The remaining four are work permit holders who arrived from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, of whom three (Cases 58761, 58764 and 58765) are foreign domestic workers.
Case 58762 – a 23-year-old female Malaysian work permit holder – served SHN at Mandarin Orchard Singapore before she was transferred to another dedicated facility on 20 December when the MOH commenced investigations into 13 previously reported cases who had served SHN at Mandarin Orchard Singapore between 22 October and 11 November 2020.
She was swabbed on 19 December and 21 December and her test results were negative for COVID-19 infection. Her swab on 24 December at the end of SHN came back positive, and she was conveyed to the hospital the next day.
A confirmatory test by the National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL) was also positive. However, a second sample taken by NPHL on 26 December came back negative, and her serological test result has also come back negative. Investigations are ongoing, the ministry said, to assess if she could be linked to the 13 cases.
Overall, the number of new cases in the community has remained low, with a total of one case in the past week – the case is currently unlinked.
99% of total cases have recovered
With eight more patients discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities on Sunday, 58,370 cases – or 99.8 per cent of the total – have fully recovered from the infection.
Most of the 31 hospitalised cases are stable or improving, and none are in the intensive care unit.
A total of 94 patients – with mild symptoms or are clinically well but still test positive – are isolated and cared for at community facilities.
Apart from 29 patients who have died from COVID-19 complications, 15 others who tested positive for the virus were determined to have died from unrelated causes, including three whose deaths were attributed to a heart attack and another four, whose deaths were attributed to coronary heart disease.
The MOH on Wednesday confirmed the city-state’s first case infected with a new variant of the novel coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the UK. Eleven others have tested preliminarily positive for the B.1.1.7 strain.
Singapore is due to enter Phase 3 of reopening on Monday.
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