2 new Covid-19 clusters detected, including at Clementi Bus Interchange

SINGAPORE — There were two new Covid-19 clusters reported on Friday (Aug 27), one linked to workers at Clementi Bus Interchange and the other to migrant workers dormitory Tuas South Lodge. 

With the new cluster in Clementi, there are now five bus interchanges across Singapore that are active Covid-19 clusters.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said that it was investigating two separate workplace clusters among people who work at the Punggol and Toa Payoh bus interchanges.

And earlier this month, it detected clusters at Bishan and Sengkang bus interchanges.

The new cluster at Clementi Bus Interchange saw an addition of three cases on Friday — it now has seven cases linked to it so far, MOH said in its nightly update on the coronavirus situation here.

Five more cases have been traced to the cluster at Toa Payoh Bus Interchange and another four to the one in Punggol. They now have a total of 29 and 17 cases respectively.

Bishan Bus Interchange also saw three more cases, making it 24 infections in the cluster, while that for Sengkang Bus Interchange remained at 22.

SERIOUSLY ILL

Data from MOH showed that the number of patients under intensive care went down to six from seven in the days before.

There are 13 patients who are in serious condition and need oxygen support to help them breathe, down from the 17 reported the day before.

Among these 13 patients with serious illness and the six under intensive care, four are fully vaccinated.

Of those who have fallen very ill, 15 are patients aged above 60, of whom 11 are not vaccinated or partially vaccinated.

MOH 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 patients who became severely ill or died is 9.2 per cent, while that for the fully vaccinated is 1.3 per cent.

There are 369 Covid-19 patients who are hospitalised as of Friday.

66 ACTIVE CLUSTERS

Four clusters have been closed and there are now 66 active Covid-19 clusters here, each having between three and 1,155 cases.

Earlier on Friday, MOH said that there were 120 new locally transmitted cases of Covid-19 for the day, with 47 linked to Bugis Junction mall. The cluster now has 151 cases.

For the rest of the 73 cases, 47 were linked to previous infections — with 31 already quarantined and 16 detected through surveillance testing, MOH said. Another 26 were not linked to confirmed cases.

Among the new cases are three seniors aged above 70 who are not vaccinated or partially vaccinated, and are at risk of serious illness.

Two imported cases were both detected on arrival in Singapore.

In all, there were 122 new cases recorded on Friday.

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has gone up from 281 in the week before to 484 in the past week.

The number of cases with no known links in the community has also risen from 81 in the week before to 133 in the past week.

The seven-day moving average number of all linked community cases and all unlinked community cases are 50.1 and 19.0 respectively.

Singapore has seen a total of 67,050 coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic.

VACCINATIONS

As of Aug 26, 79 per cent of the population had completed their full regimen or received two doses of Covid-19 vaccines, and 83 per cent had received at least one dose.

For other vaccines recognised in the World Health Organization’s Emergency Use Listing such as Sinovac, 163,009 doses had been administered as of Aug 26, covering 85,390 individuals.