183 More Cases Discharged, 100 New Cases of COVID-19 Infection Confirmed

           As of 18 August 2020, 12pm, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has confirmed and verified an additional 100 cases of COVID-19 infection in Singapore. The breakdown of the cases is as follows:

a) Imported cases: 2 (1 Permanent Resident, 1 Dependant’s Pass holder)

Amongst the 2 imported cases, 1 (Case 55977) is a Singapore Permanent Resident who returned to Singapore from India on 6 August. The remaining case (Case 56005) is a Dependant’s Pass holder who arrived from India on 10 August. Both of them had been placed on 14-day Stay-Home Notice (SHN) upon arrival in Singapore, and were serving their SHN at dedicated facilities. They had been tested while serving their SHN.

b) Cases in the community: 1 (1 Singaporean)

There is 1 case in the community today who is currently unlinked. Case 56022 works at a bus depot in a role that is non-public facing and does not entail interaction with commuters and bus captains. He was detected as part of our screening of all staff in the public bus industry who work at depots and interchanges. This is a precautionary measure after MOH detected some cases at Bukit Panjang Integrated Transport Hub. In all, more than 14,800 staff and close contacts of the cases had been tested between 23 July and 15 August. Of these, 10 had tested positive using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test so far[1]. This is 1 (Case 56022) more than the 9 cases previously announced by MOH and the Land Transport Authority on 8 August. Testing has since completed, and 5 results are pending.

To determine if these 10 cases are current or past infections, we also conducted serological tests for them and 7 results have come back positive (including Case 56022), which indicate likely past infection[2].

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has remained stable at an average of 2 cases per day in the past 2 weeks. The number of unlinked cases in the community has also remained stable at an average of 1 case per day in the past 2 weeks. We will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme.

c) Cases residing in dormitories: 97

The Inter-agency Taskforce has completed the testing of all workers in the dormitories. There are currently about 17,900 workers who are still serving out their quarantine period. These workers will be tested when their quarantine ends, and we expect the case counts to remain high in the coming days, before tapering down thereafter.

2.             Details of these trends can be found in MOH’s daily situation Report (www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/situation-report). Please refer to Annex A for the summary of the confirmed cases.

3.            Of the new cases, 95% are linked to known clusters, while the rest are pending contact tracing.

Links between previous cases found

4.          Further epidemiological investigations and contact tracing have uncovered links between previously announced and new cases. Please refer to Annex B and Annex C for details.

Update on condition of confirmed cases

5.       183 more cases of COVID-19 infection have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 52,533 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities.

6.          There are currently 88 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and none is in the intensive care unit. 3,290 are isolated and cared for at community facilities. These are those who have mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for COVID-19. 27 have passed away from complications due to COVID-19 infection.

[1] Including 3 initial cases detected at Bukit Panjang Integrated Transport Hub.

[2] Cases whose serological tests are positive are likely to have a past infection, and could be shedding minute fragments of the virus RNA picked by the PCR test, which were no longer transmissible and infective to others.