6 new COVID-19 cases in Singapore, all imported

SINGAPORE: Singapore reported six new COVID-19 infections as of noon on Tuesday (Nov 17), taking the country's total number of cases to 58,130. 

All the six cases were imported and had been placed on stay-home notice upon arrival in Singapore, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) in its preliminary daily update. 

There were no locally transmitted cases for the seventh consecutive day.

IMPORTED CASES

Of the new cases, five were asymptomatic and detected through proactive screening and surveillance. The one symptomatic case is a 55-year-old Singaporean man who had returned from India.

Three imported cases arrived from the Philippines - two work permit holders, both women aged 27 and 41, and a long-term visit pass holder, a 28-year-old woman.

The remaining two cases are: A 30-year-old woman holding a work permit who arrived from Myanmar, and a 62-year-old woman holding a dependent's pass who had arrived from the UK.

READ: Explainer: Where are we in the COVID-19 vaccine race?

SIX MORE COVID-19 PATIENTS DISCHARGED

Six more COVID-19 cases have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 58,039 have fully recovered from the infection.

There are 37 COVID-19 patients who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and no one is in the intensive care unit.

MOH said that 26 patients are isolated and cared for at community facilities. These are patients who have mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for COVID-19.

Twenty-eight people in Singapore have died from complications due to COVID-19.

READ: Vaccine will not be enough to stop COVID-19 pandemic - WHO chief

VACCINE NOT ENOUGH TO STOP COVID-19 PANDEMIC: WHO CHIEF

On Monday, the World Health Organization chief hailed "encouraging" news about COVID-19 vaccines but expressed concern about surging cases in many countries and insisted that complacency was not an option.

"We continue to receive encouraging news about COVID-19 vaccines and remain cautiously optimistic about the potential for new tools to start to arrive in the coming months," said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. 

But he added: "This is no time for complacency."

His comments came after a second candidate vaccine was found to be nearly 95 per cent effective in an ongoing trial.

The news from US biotech firm Moderna brought much-needed optimism, and came after similar results were announced last week for a vaccine candidate developed by pharma giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.

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