Covid-19: 90 unlinked infections; bus interchange clusters grow to 314 with 29 new cases

• A total of 314 Covid-19 cases have been linked to eight bus interchanges across Singapore as of Sept 1
• The Bugis Junction cluster has grown to 233 with nine new cases
• The number of patients under intensive care has remained constant at five
• There are 22 patients in serious condition and in need of oxygen support, up from 19 the day before

SINGAPORE — Another 29 new Covid-19 cases were traced to seven bus interchange clusters, data from the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Wednesday (Aug 31) showed.

This brings the total number of cases linked to the eight bus interchange clusters here to 314.

All of the bus interchange clusters recorded new cases on Wednesday, except for the one in Sengkang.

In its nightly update on the coronavirus situation here, MOH said that there were 177 new locally transmitted cases of Covid-19, including 90 that are not linked to earlier infections.

This is the highest number of locally transmitted cases since July 21, when 179 such cases were reported.

For the 87 cases that were linked to confirmed cases, 54 had already been quarantined and 33 were detected through surveillance testing, MOH said.

Among the cases is one senior aged above 70 who is not vaccinated and is at risk of serious illness.

Apart from the locally transmitted cases, there were three imported infections. All of them developed the illness while in isolation.

In all, there were 180 new Covid-19 cases confirmed on Wednesday.

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has shot up from 335 in the week before to 845 in the past week.

The number of cases with no known links in the community has more than doubled from 112 in the week before to 253 in the past week.

The seven-day moving average number of all linked community cases and all unlinked community cases is 84.6 and 36.1 respectively.

There have been a total of 67,800 coronavirus cases here since the start of the pandemic.

68 ACTIVE CLUSTERS

There were no new clusters on Wednesday and two were closed.

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

Eight more infections were added to the cluster at Toa Payoh Bus Interchange, the largest among the various interchanges with 93 cases now.

For the rest of the interchanges:

• Boon Lay has 66 cases after nine new cases were added

• Clementi has 20 after adding four

• Tampines has 23 after adding three

• Jurong East has 28 after adding two

• Punggol has 32 after adding two

• Bishan has 28 after adding one

Of note, the Bugis Junction mall cluster has grown to 233 cases with nine more added, while there were six more cases detected at the Institute of Mental Health. The hospital now has 14 cases.

SERIOUSLY ILL

Data from MOH showed that the number of patients under intensive care has remained constant at five since Aug 30.

There are 22 patients who are in serious condition and need oxygen support to help them breathe, up from 19 the day before.

Among these 22 with serious illness and the five under intensive care, 10 are fully vaccinated.

Of those who have fallen very ill, 18 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 8.3 per cent, while that for the fully vaccinated is 1.1 per cent.

There are 499 Covid-19 patients who are hospitalised as of Wednesday.

Separately, MOH said in an update that it has completed its community surveillance testing of residents at Block 113 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 4.

“All 271 individuals were found to be negative for Covid-19,” it said.

VACCINATIONS

As of Aug 31, 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, 167,898 doses had been administered as of Aug 31, covering 85,786 individuals.