No New Cases of Locally Transmitted COVID-19 Infection

       As of 19 December 2020, 12pm, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has confirmed and verified that there are no new cases of locally transmitted COVID-19 infection. There are 17 imported cases, who had already been placed on Stay-Home Notice (SHN) or isolated upon arrival in Singapore. Amongst the new cases today, 15 are asymptomatic, and were detected from our proactive screening and surveillance, while 2 were symptomatic.  

Summary of new cases

2.     Overall, the number of new cases in the community has remained low, with no new cases in the past week. We will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme.

Case Details

a) Cases in the community: 0

There are no cases in the community today.

b) Cases residing in dormitories: 0

There are no cases residing in dormitories today. 

c) Imported cases: 17

Amongst the 17 imported cases, 1 (Case 58636) is a Singaporean and 2 (Cases 58633 and 58635) are Singapore Permanent Residents who returned from the UK, India and US. Another 8 (Cases 58619, 58620, 58622, 58623, 58624, 58625, 58626 and 58627) are Work Permit holders currently employed in Singapore who arrived from Indonesia and India. The remaining 6 cases are Short-Term Visit Pass holders. Of these, 2 (Cases 58628 and 58631) arrived from the UK and India to visit their family members who are Singaporeans or Singapore Permanent Residents. 3 (Cases 58617, 58618 and 58632) are crew members of a ship which arrived from Indonesia. They had not disembarked from the ship and were tested onboard and subsequently conveyed to the hospital when their results came back positive for COVID-19 infection. The remaining case (Case 58629) arrived from Malaysia for a work project in Singapore. 

They had all already been placed on SHN or isolated upon arrival in Singapore and were tested while serving SHN or during isolation.

3.    Please refer to the Annexes and MOH’s daily Situation Report (www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/situation-report) for details. 

4.      Epidemiological investigations are in progress. In the meantime, all the identified close contacts of the cases have been isolated and placed on quarantine, and will be tested at the start and end of their quarantine period so that we can detect asymptomatic cases. We will also conduct serological tests for the close contacts to determine if the cases could have been infected by them.

Investigations into 13 cases who served SHN at Mandarin Orchard Singapore

5.      As announced this afternoon, MOH is investigating 13 cases¹ of COVID-19 infection amongst individuals who had served SHN at Mandarin Orchard Singapore between 22 October and 11 November 2020. The cases, who were confirmed between 2 November and 11 November to have COVID-19 infection, were observed to have high genetic similarity despite having arrived from different countries. From MOH’s preliminary investigations, we cannot exclude that transmissions could have occurred at Mandarin Orchard Singapore.

6.      As a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of all guests, the hotel has stopped accepting new guests and is checking out existing guests progressively. Persons serving SHN will be transported via dedicated vehicles to an alternative SHN dedicated facility. Deep cleaning and disinfection will be carried out by the hotel, in consultation with MOH and the National Environment Agency. MOH has commenced a special testing operations to test around 500 staff of the hotel for COVID-19 infection. We have also tested most of those who are currently serving SHN at Mandarin Orchard Singapore, and are pending the results of their tests. 

Update on condition of confirmed cases

7.    9 more cases of COVID-19 infection have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 58,274 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities. 

8.      There are currently 38 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and none is in the intensive care unit. 62 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. 29 have passed away from complications due to COVID-19 infection. 

MINISTRY OF HEALTH
19 DECEMBER 2020

¹ Cases 58204, 58235, 58233, 58236, 58237, 58234, 58244, 58245, 58253, 58252, 58268, 58281 and 58284. These cases were classified as imported cases due to their recent travel history.