248 new Covid-19 cases in Singapore, including 11 in the community and 4 imported cases

SINGAPORE — Singapore has confirmed 248 new cases of Covid-19, including 11 in the community, four that were imported and 233 linked to migrant workers living in dormitories.

The Ministry of Health said on Thursday (July 16) that the four imported cases include two Singaporeans, one permanent resident and one work pass holder.

One of the Singaporeans — a 60-year-old woman — had returned from the United States on July 3. The other Singaporean and the permanent resident had returned from Azerbaijan on July 4 and had been identified as contacts of past confirmed cases.

The remaining imported case — a 43-year-old work pass holder from Indonesia — had arrived in Singapore on July 4.

They had all tested positive for the coronavirus while serving their 14-day stay-home notice, MOH said.

For the 11 community cases, five have been linked to previous cases or clusters while six have no known links to past infections.

MOH said that investigations are ongoing to find out how the infection was spread for the six cases with no links, including a patient who was swabbed under the ministry’s enhanced community testing exercise for all individuals aged 13 and above who are diagnosed with acute respiratory infection at first presentation to a doctor.

“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 their household contacts to determine if these cases could have been infected by them,” MOH added.

A serological test is used to check if a person had an infection in the past, or on someone who is asymptomatic or has a very low viral load.

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has gone down from an average of 16 a day in the week before to an average of 12 a day in the past week.

The number of unlinked cases in the community has gone down slightly from an average of eight a day in the week before to an average of seven a day in the past week.

“We will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme,” MOH said.

UPDATES ON THE REMAINING CASES

In all, the total number of infections here now stands at 47,126.

Of these, 43,256 people have fully recovered and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities, including the 268 on Thursday.

There are still 146 patients in hospitals and most are in stable condition or improving.

Another 3,697 patients 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.

Twenty-seven people have died from complications due to Covid-19.