2 new Cases of locally transmitted Covid-19 infection

      As of 5 January 2021, 12pm, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has confirmed and verified that there are 2 new cases of locally transmitted COVID-19 infection. The cases are in the community, and there are no new cases in the dormitories. There are 26 imported cases, who had already been placed on Stay-Home Notice (SHN) or isolated upon arrival in Singapore. Amongst the new cases today, 26 are asymptomatic, and were detected from our proactive screening and surveillance, while 2 were symptomatic.

2.      Overall, the number of new cases in the community has increased from 1 case in the week before to 11 cases in the past week. The number of unlinked cases in the community has also increased from 1 case in the week before to 4 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: 2

There are 2 cases in the community today, of whom 1 is currently unlinked and the other is linked to previous cases.

Case 58981

Case 58981, a 49 year-old male Indian national, is a Short-Term Visit Pass holder who is here to visit his Singaporean spouse. He arrived from India on 10 December 2020, and served SHN at a dedicated facility until 24 December. His pre-departure test taken in India on 6 December was negative for COVID-19 infection, and his test on 21 December during SHN came back negative as well.

He is asymptomatic, and was detected when he took a COVID-19 pre-departure test on 3 January in preparation for his return to India. His result came back positive for COVID-19 infection the next day and he was conveyed to Mount Elizabeth Hospital. His serological test result has come back positive, which indicates a likely past infection.

Case 58997

Case 58997 is a 55 year-old male Singaporean who works as a cargo officer. He was on board bunker tanker NewOcean 6 from 21 December to 23 December, and from 28 December to 2 January. From 23 December to 28 December, he stayed at his home at Tah Ching Road.

His earlier tests from Rostered Routine Testing (RRT) – the last being on 23 December – had been negative for COVID-19 infection.

On 31 December, he was placed on quarantine as he had been identified as a close contact of a previously reported case (Case 58812 ) who is a crew member of the same vessel. Case 58997 was conveyed to a government quarantine facility on 2 January, and tested positive for COVID-19 infection on 3 January. He was then conveyed to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases. His serological test result has come back negative, indicating that this is likely a current infection.

All the remaining crew members of the vessel have been placed on quarantine since 31 December.

Epidemiological investigations are ongoing. In the meantime, all the identified close contacts of the cases, including their family members and co-workers, 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 case could have been infected by them.

b) Cases residing in dormitories: 0

There are no cases residing in dormitories today.

c) Imported cases: 26

Amongst the 26 imported cases,

• 2 (Cases 58976 and 58999) are Singaporeans and 2 (Cases 58998 and 59002) are Singapore Permanent Residents who returned from US, UK and India.

• 2 (Cases 58974 and 58975) are Work Pass holders who arrived from UAE.

• 20 are Work Permit holders who arrived from Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar and the Philippines, of whom 13 (Cases 58978, 58979, 58980, 58984, 58985, 58986, 58987, 58988, 58989, 58990, 58991, 59000 and 59001) are foreign domestic workers.

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

Cases 58992, 58993, 58994, 58995 and 58996 are crew of NewOcean 6 who had boarded the vessel in March or September 2020. They were all placed on quarantine on 31 December, and conveyed to a government quarantine facility on 2 January. They were tested positive for COVID-19 infection on 4 January. Prior to that, they had not disembarked from the vessel.

3.      Please refer to the Annexes [PDF, 278 KB] for details.

Update on condition of confirmed cases

4.      20 more cases of COVID-19 infection have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 58,517 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities.

5.      There are currently 60 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and 1 is in critical condition in the intensive care unit. 143 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
5 JANUARY 2021