344 new Covid-19 cases in Singapore, including 3 preschool workers
SINGAPORE — Singapore has confirmed 344 new cases of Covid-19 on Monday (May 25), including three preschool staff members who tested positive for the disease.
This brings the country’s tally to 31,960.
In a media statement, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said the three preschool staff are two Singaporean women and one Chinese national.
One of them, a 25-year-old Singaporean woman which MOH has listed as case 31844, had gone to work at Learning Vision @ NUHS after taking a swab test.
The 23-year-old Singaporean woman and the 44-year-old Chinese woman had not gone to work recently. The ministry did not specify where they work.
Their positive test results — all confirmed on May 24 — were picked up as a result of proactive screening of preschool staff, said MOH.
This takes the total number of preschool staff infected with the disease to 11. All 30,000 teaching and non-teaching staff at preschools have to be tested for Covid-19 by June 2 before they reopen.
The three preschool staff announced by MOH on Monday were among the six cases in the community. Of these, four cases are Singaporeans or permanent residents while two are work permit holders.
The health ministry noted that the number of new cases in the community has increased, from an average of four cases per day in the week before to an average of seven per day in the past week.
“This is partly due to our active surveillance and screening of nursing home residents and pre-school staff, which have picked up more cases in the past week,” it said.
On the other hand, the number of unlinked cases in the community has remained stable at an average of two per day in the past two weeks, said MOH.
“We will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme.”
Apart from the six community cases, the remaining 338 new infections were linked to foreign workers living in dormitories.
MOH said it continues to pick up many cases among work permit holders residing in the dormitories, including factory-converted dormitories, because of extensive testing in these premises, as part of its process to verify and test the status of all workers.
There were no imported cases on Monday.
For a second day in a row, no new clusters were reported on Monday too.
The ministry said it will also be closing the cluster linked to Sembcorp Marine Admiralty Yard as there have been no more linked cases to the cluster for 28 days — the past two incubation periods.
Further epidemiological investigations and contract tracing have also uncovered links between previously announced and new cases, it added.
In all, MOH said 15,738 patients have fully recovered from Covid-19 and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities, including 862 people on Monday.
There are currently 607 confirmed cases who are still in hospital.
Of these, most are stable or improving, and eight are in critical condition under intensive care.
MOH said that 15,592 patients are isolated and cared for at community care facilities. These are those who have mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for Covid-19.
To date, 23 people have died from complications due to Covid-19 infection.
