Dip in number of Covid-19 patients who need oxygen support, 1 new cluster detected: MOH

• The number of patients who are in serious condition and need oxygen support has dropped to 22 on Aug 21
• MOH reported one new cluster with four cases that were linked to an individual 
• As of Aug 20, 78 per cent of the population had completed their full regimen or received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines
   

SINGAPORE —There has been a dip in the number of Covid-19 patients who are in serious condition and require oxygen support to breathe, data from the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Saturday (Aug 21) showed. 

In its nightly update on the coronavirus situation here, MOH said that there was one new cluster with four cases that were linked to an individual, though it did not provide more information on the person.

The number of patients who are in intensive care units (ICUs) has remained at seven on Saturday, the same as the day before.

However, there are 22 patients who need oxygen support to help them breathe — down from the 27 reported the day before.

Among the 29 with serious illness, including those in ICU, 23 are patients aged above 60, of whom five are fully vaccinated while 18 are not vaccinated or partially vaccinated, MOH said.

It stressed that there is continuing evidence that “almost all fully vaccinated individuals do not suffer serious disease when infected unless they had underlying medical conditions that made them more susceptible”.

Over the last 28 days, the percentage of unvaccinated who became severely ill or died is 8.8 per cent, while that for the fully vaccinated is 1.7 per cent.

There are 364 Covid-19 patients who are hospitalised as of Saturday, down from 380 the day before.

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has gone down from 377 in the week before to 260 in the past week.

The number of cases with no known links in the community has also gone down from 98 in the week before to 87 in the past week.

The seven-day moving average number of all linked community cases and all unlinked community cases are 24.7 and 12.4 respectively.

76 ACTIVE CLUSTERS

Two clusters have been closed and there are now 76 active Covid-19 clusters here, each having between three and 1,155 cases.

Earlier on Saturday, MOH said that Singapore recorded 32 new locally transmitted Covid-19 cases, including 16 that were not linked to earlier infections.

For the other 16 cases linked to confirmed cases, 11 had already been placed under quarantine and another five were detected through surveillance testing.

Apart from the locally transmitted cases, there were five imported cases. Of these, three were detected upon arrival in Singapore, while two developed the illness during stay-home notice or in isolation.

In total, there were 37 new cases of Covid-19 on Saturday.

The 32 locally transmitted cases were four less than the 36 reported on Friday.

The country has recorded 66,443 coronavirus cases and 47 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

VACCINATIONS

As of Aug 20, 78 per cent of the population had completed their full regimen or received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines, and 82 per cent had received at least one dose.

For other vaccines recognised in the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing such as Sinovac, 156,114 doses had been administered as of Aug 20, covering 84,345 individuals.