2 new Covid-19 clusters detected — one with 32 cases and another linked to a Giant outlet

• Singapore detected two new Covid-19 clusters linked to an individual and a supermarket outlet
• There has been a slight increase in the number of patients who are in intensive care units and those in serious condition
• The 29 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases reported on Aug 19 is the lowest since July 13

SINGAPORE — Singapore on Thursday (Aug 19) reported two new Covid-19 clusters, one linked to a Giant supermarket in Hougang and the other to an individual. 

Seven cases were linked to the supermarket located at Block 683 Hougang Avenue 8 and 32 cases were linked to the individual. No other information was provided by the Ministry of Health (MOH) on the cluster.

TODAY has reached out to the ministry for more information.

In addition, data from MOH showed that the number of patients who are in intensive care units (ICUs) has risen from six to eight.

There are 29 patients who are in serious condition and need oxygen support to help them breathe, up from the 26 reported the day before.

Among these 29 patients and the eight under intensive care, eight are fully vaccinated.

Of those who have fallen very ill, 28 are patients aged above 60, of whom 22 are not vaccinated or partially vaccinated, MOH said in its nightly coronavirus update.

It stressed that there is continuing evidence that “almost all fully vaccinated individuals do not suffer serious disease when infected unless they had underlying medical conditions that made them more susceptible”.

Over the last 28 days, the percentage of unvaccinated patients who became severely ill or died is 9.1 per cent, while that for fully vaccinated patients is 1.7 per cent.

There are 391 Covid-19 patients who are hospitalised as of Thursday.

84 ACTIVE CLUSTERS

Besides the two new clusters reported on Thursday, five others have been closed.

There are now 84 active Covid-19 clusters here, each having between three and 1,155 cases.

Earlier on Thursday, MOH said that Singapore recorded 29 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases, including 13 that were not linked to earlier reported infections.

This is the lowest number of locally transmitted cases since July 13, when 19 such cases were reported.

For the 16 linked to confirmed cases, 11 had already been placed under quarantine and another five were detected through surveillance testing.

Besides the locally transmitted cases, there were three imported cases, making it a total of 32 new Covid-19 cases confirmed on Thursday.

One of the imported cases was detected on arrival in Singapore and the remaining two developed the illness during stay-home notice or in isolation.

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has gone down from 412 in the week before to 290 in the past week.

The number of cases with no known links in the community has also gone down from 112 in the week before to 80 in the past week.

The seven-day moving average number of all linked community cases and all unlinked community cases are 30.0 and 11.4 respectively.

The total number of Covid-19 cases in Singapore is now 66,366.

VACCINATIONS

As of Aug 18, 77 per cent of the population had completed their full regimen or received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines, and 82 per cent had received at least one dose.

For other vaccines recognised in the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing such as Sinovac, 153,913 doses had been administered as of Aug 18, covering 84,219 individuals.