Covid-19: Changi General Hospital cluster rises to 36 cases, 3 new clusters reported

• The Covid-19 cluster at Changi General Hospital has grown to 36, with 21 new cases on Sept 4
• Three new clusters were reported, including a student care centre in Serangoon
• The number of cases linked to bus interchanges has grown to 416
• As at Sept 3, 81 per cent of Singapore’s population has received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines, and 83 per cent have received at least one dose. 

SINGAPORE — The Covid-19 cluster at Changi General Hospital (CGH) has risen to 36 cases after 21 more were identified, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Saturday (Sept 4).

Three new clusters have also emerged, MOH said in its nightly update on the coronavirus situation here.

The new clusters are:

• Sembcorp Marine Tuas Boulevard Yard with eight cases

• Radiance Student Care Centre in Serangoon with four cases

• Orient Goldsmiths & Jewellers in Toa Payoh, with three cases among its staff members

Singapore registered 253 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases on Saturday, including 116 that were not linked to earlier infections.

Of the 137 cases linked to confirmed cases, 84 had already been quarantined and 53 were detected through surveillance testing.

Among the cases are two seniors aged above 70 who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated and are at risk of serious illness.

There were six imported cases — four detected upon arrival in Singapore and two who developed the illness while in isolation.

In all, there were 259 new Covid-19 cases confirmed on Saturday. 

The country has recorded a total of 68,469 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic.

SERIOUSLY ILL

Data from MOH showed that there are 22 patients who need oxygen support to help them breathe.

The number of patients who are in intensive care units has remained at five since Aug 30.

Of those who have fallen very ill, 22 are patients aged above 60, of whom 12 are not vaccinated or partially vaccinated.

MOH 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 who became severely ill or died is 7.1 per cent, while that for the fully vaccinated is 1.1 per cent.

There are 608 Covid-19 patients who are hospitalised as of Saturday.

62 ACTIVE CLUSTERS

One cluster has closed and this brings the total number of active clusters here to 62. Each of them have between three and 1,155 cases.

The number of cases linked to Covid-19 clusters at bus interchanges has grown to 416 with another 26 cases added.

Eleven of these were linked to the Toa Payoh Bus Interchange cluster, the largest among the various interchanges with 130 now. 

For the rest of the interchanges:

• Boon Lay has 99 cases after 6 new cases were detected

• Punggol has 35 after adding two

• Clementi has 34 after adding five

• Tampines has 32 after adding two

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has increased from 551 cases in the week before to 1,167 cases in the past week.

The number of unlinked cases in the community has also increased from 128 cases in the week before to 470 cases in the past week.

The seven-day moving average number of all linked community cases and all unlinked community cases is 99.6 and 67.1 respectively, MOH said.

VACCINATIONS

As at Sept 3, 81 per cent of Singapore’s population has received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines, and 83 per cent have received at least one dose. 

A total of 8,765,482 doses of Covid-19 vaccines under the national vaccination programme, which include the Pfizer-BioNTech or Comirnaty and Moderna vaccines, have been administered covering 4,527,338 individuals.

A total of 4,357,467 individuals have completed the full vaccination regimen. 

For other vaccines recognised in the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing such as Sinovac, 170,144 doses had been administered as of Sept 3, covering 86,019 individuals.