202 new Covid-19 infections in Singapore, including 7 in the community and 8 imported cases
Three of the community cases announced on July 18, 2020 are linked to previous cases or clusters, while four have no known sources of infection.
SINGAPORE — Singapore has confirmed 202 new cases of Covid-19, including seven that are in the community, eight that are imported while the rest of the cases are made up of migrant workers staying in the dormitories.
In a press release on Saturday (July 18), the Ministry of Health (MOH) said that of the seven cases in the community, five are Singaporeans or permanent residents and two are work pass holders.
Among the imported cases, one is a 78-year-old Singaporean man who returned from Pakistan on July 4 and one is a 17-year-old male permanent resident who returned from India on July 6.
Another four are work pass holders employed in Singapore while one is a dependant’s pass holder. They arrived in Singapore from India between July 6 and 15.
All seven had been placed on a 14-day stay-home notice upon arrival here and were tested while serving their notice.
The eighth imported case arrived in Singapore from the Philippines on July 16 and was taken to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases as he was symptomatic.
He is a 40-year-old sailor holding a special pass who was to join a vessel that called in the Singapore port.
Of the seven cases in the community, three were picked up as a result of proactive surveillance and screening and one had already been placed on quarantine earlier, MOH said. Four of the cases are asymptomatic and were detected through proactive testing.
Three of the community cases are linked to previous cases or clusters, while four have no known sources of infection.
Of the four with no links, two were detected as a result of the screening of workers in essential services who are living outside dormitories.
The remaining two were swabbed under MOH’s enhanced community testing to test all individuals aged 13 and above who are diagnosed with acute respiratory infection at first presentation to a doctor.
“This allows us to detect infected individuals early and to quickly contain further spread,” MOH said.
Investigations are ongoing to find out how the disease was spread for the cases with no links, it added.
In the meantime, all the identified close contacts of these cases have been isolated and placed on quarantine, and will be tested at the start and end of their quarantine period so that MOH can detect asymptomatic cases.
“We will also conduct serological tests for their household contacts to determine if these cases could have been infected by them,” MOH added.
A serological test is used to check if a person had an infection in the past, or on someone who is asymptomatic or has a very low viral load.
Overall, the number of new cases in the community has dropped, from an average of 18 cases a day in the week before, to an average of nine a day in the past week.
The number of unlinked cases in the community has also gone down from an average of nine cases a day in the week before, to an average of five a day in the past week.
“We will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme,” MOH said.
The ministry also said on Saturday that it has identified a new cluster at a dormitory at 72 Tagore Lane and a dormitory at 54 Tech Park Crescent.
It added that the clusters at Changi Lodge II (80 Tanah Merah Coast Road) and Sungei Tengah Lodge (500 Old Choa Chu Kang Road) have been closed as there have been no more cases linked to for the past two incubation periods.
UPDATE ON REMAINING CASES
In all, the total number of infections here now stands at 47,655.
Of these, 43,833 have fully recovered and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities, including the 256 on Saturday.
There are still 169 patients who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and none is in the intensive care unit.
Another 3,626 patients are isolated and cared for at community facilities. These are those who have mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for Covid-19.
Twenty-seven people have died from complications due to Covid-19.
