Woman, 59, developed Covid-19 symptoms nine days after recovering from itchy throat
SINGAPORE — First, she had an itchy throat on Feb 4 and saw a doctor who put her on five days’ medical leave.
She was told to go back for a review if she had not recovered after three days, but two days after her visit, she informed her doctor that she had recovered from her ailment.
Then, nine days after that on Feb 15, she developed fever, chills, nausea and epigastric pain. She went to Sengkang General Hospital where she was tested for the coronavirus and isolated.
On Tuesday (Feb 16), her test result came back positive for Covid-19.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) reported on Wednesday evening that the 59-year-old Singaporean woman was the sole community case for the day.
She works in an administrative role at Aibel — a service company within the oil, gas and offshore wind industries — but has been working from home since March last year.
MOH said that her serology test for past infection has come back negative, indicating that this is likely a current infection.
Investigations into this case are ongoing and MOH has since identified all of the woman’s close contacts.
Overall, the number of new cases in the community has gone up slightly from four in the week before to six in the past week.
The number of cases with no known links in the community has, however, gone down from four in the week before to three in the past week.
MOH added that it has been monitoring the existing clusters for any further transmission.
“As there have been no more cases linked to the Case 59,343 cluster for the past two incubation periods, the cluster has now been closed,” MOH said.
The cluster had begun after a 33-year-old male Chinese national who works as a food processing worker at Golden Bridge Foods Manufacturing Force was detected to have the virus.
IMPORTED CASES
There were 10 imported cases of Covid-19 confirmed by MOH on Wednesday and all had been placed on stay-home notices upon their arrival here.
They are:
One work pass holder who arrived from India
Eight work permit holders who came from Indonesia and Malaysia — seven of whom are foreign domestic workers
One short-term visit pass holder who arrived from India for studies in Singapore
MOH said that of these 10 cases, seven had arrived here before the requirement for mandatory on-arrival serology tests started, while the remaining three were not required to undergo these tests upon arrival.
UPDATE ON REMAINING CASES
The total number of infections in Singapore is now 59,821.
Of these, 59,676 people have fully recovered and been discharged, including 15 on Wednesday.
There are 25 patients in hospitals, including one who is in intensive care.
Another 91 patients are isolated at community facilities. They have mild symptoms or are clinically well but still tested positive for Covid-19.
Twenty-nine people have died from complications due to the disease.
