Number of Covid-19 infections crosses 50,000 mark in Singapore, with 481 new cases
SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Health (MOH) reported 481 new Covid-19 cases in Singapore on Sunday (July 26), taking the number of infections in the country past the 50,000 mark.
Of the new cases, four are imported while five are in the community.
Two of the imported cases had returned from Indonesia on July 24 — a one-year-old Singaporean and a 30-year-old permanent resident — while the other two are work permit holders who arrived from the Philippines on July 14.
Three of the five community cases have no links to past cases or clusters.
The rest of the new patients are work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories.
There had been a rise in the number of Covid-19 cases involving foreign workers in dormitories as the authorities are in the “final stretch of clearance work” to make sure workers with a higher chance of catching the disease are tested and certified fit to get back to work, then-National Development Minister Lawrence Wong said on July 17.
He was explaining why dormitories had seen infections rise from 100 and 200 new cases earlier this month to more than 300 on most days since July 13.
MOH said on Sunday that all the dormitories should be cleared by the beginning of August, with the exception of 17 blocks in eight purpose-built dormitories, which serve as quarantine facilities for 28,000 workers still in their isolation period.
This last cohort of workers come from dormitories with a "relatively high prevalence" of Covid-19, and will be subject to a final test before they complete their isolation periods, MOH added.
The ministry expects the daily case counts to be high for the coming two weeks, before tapering thereafter.
Overall, the number of new cases in the community has gone down, from an average of 10 a day in the week before, to an average of seven a day in the past week.
The number of cases in the community that have no links to past cases has also dropped, from an average of five a day in the week before, to an average of four a day in the past week.
Singapore's tally of Covid-19 cases now stands at 50,369.
