Tampines Bus Interchange, IMH form 2 new Covid-19 clusters; 8 bus interchanges now active clusters

• Tampines Bus Interchange was identified as a new Covid-19 cluster with 11 cases
• It became the eighth active cluster among bus interchanges here, with a total of 229 cases in all as of Aug 30
• There are 19 Covid-19 patients who need oxygen support to help them breathe, up from the 14 reported the day before
• The number of patients under intensive care, however, went down to five from six the day before

SINGAPORE — The number of bus interchanges linked to Covid-19 clusters has continued to grow, with the Ministry of Health (MOH) adding Tampines Bus Interchange to the list on Monday (Aug 30) to make it eight in all.

The new cluster among workers at Tampines Bus Interchange saw an addition of four cases on Monday and now has 11 cases, MOH said in its nightly update on the coronavirus situation here.

It was one of two new Covid-19 clusters reported on Monday, the other being linked to the Institute of Mental Health.

Over the weekend, MOH announced new Covid-19 clusters at Boon Lay and Jurong East bus interchanges, following earlier clusters at Clementi Bus Interchange last Friday as well as at Punggol and Toa Payoh bus interchanges last Thursday.

Similar clusters were reported at Bishan and Sengkang bus interchanges earlier this month.

As of Monday, there were a total of 229 Covid-19 cases across the eight affected bus interchanges.

This was after 15 new cases were added to the cluster in Boon Lay, 18 to the one in Toa Payoh, three in Jurong East, four in Punggol as well as two at Bishan Bus Interchange.

No new cases were detected at the clusters in Clementi and Sengkang on Monday.

Among the eight bus interchanges, the one at Toa Payoh has the most number of infections at 70 cases.

SERIOUSLY ILL

Data from MOH showed that the number of patients under intensive care went down to five from six the day before.

There are 19 patients who are in serious condition and need oxygen support to help them breathe, up from the 14 the day before.

Among these 19 patients with serious illness and the five under intensive care, seven are fully vaccinated.

Of those who have fallen very ill, 15 are patients aged above 60, of whom nine 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 9.3 per cent, while that for the fully vaccinated is 1.3 per cent.

There are 441 Covid-19 patients who are hospitalised as of Monday.

68 ACTIVE CLUSTERS

One cluster has been closed. With that, there are now 68 active Covid-19 clusters here, each having between three and 1,155 cases.

The new cluster at the Institute of Mental Health has six cases after four more were added.

Earlier, MOH reported that there were 147 new locally transmitted cases of Covid-19, including 52 not linked to earlier infections.

This is the highest number of locally transmitted cases since July 22, when 162 such cases were reported then.

Of the remaining 95 locally transmitted infections traced to confirmed cases, 53 had already been quarantined and 42 were detected through surveillance testing.

Among the cases is one senior aged above 70 who is partially vaccinated and is at risk of serious illness.

There were also eight imported cases — three were detected on arrival and five developed the illness while in isolation.

In all, there were 155 new Covid-19 cases confirmed on Monday.

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has tripled from 240 in the week before to 723 in the past week.

The number of cases with no known links in the community has also gone up from 91 in the week before to 173 in the past week.

The seven-day moving average number of all linked community cases and all unlinked community cases are 78.6 and 24.7 respectively.

There have been a total of 67,459 coronavirus cases here since the start of the pandemic.

VACCINATIONS

As of Aug 29, 80 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, 166,142 doses had been administered as of Aug 29, covering 85,584 individuals.