15 new COVID cases in Singapore, all imported for 12th consecutive day

SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed 15 new COVID-19 cases in Singapore on Wednesday (24 March), taking the country's total case count to 60,236.

All cases are imported and there are no local infections reported for the 12th day in a row. "Amongst the new cases today, 14 are asymptomatic, and were detected from our proactive screening and surveillance, while one was symptomatic," said the MOH.

Among the 15 imported cases, three are Singaporeans – including a 14-year-old boy and 16-year-old girl – who returned from Indonesia and the UK.

Another is a dependant’s pass holder who arrived from Indonesia. Two others are work pass holders who arrived from India.

The remaining nine cases are work permit holders who arrived from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, of whom one is a foreign domestic worker. Wednesday's sole symptomatic case is a 35-year-old male work permit holder who arrived from Malaysia and had an onset of symptoms on 11 March.

All imported cases were placed on the stay-home notice upon their arrival here and were tested while serving the notice.

The MOH said that the number of new cases in the community has decreased from two in the week before to none in the past week. The number of unlinked cases in the community has also decreased from two in the week before to none in the past week.

437 NUS UTown hostel residents tested negative, 1 pending

The MOH said on Tuesday that low levels of COVID-19 viral RNA were detected on 21 March from the National Environment Agency’s testing of wastewater sample from the UTown Residence North Tower at the National University of Singapore. The sample was collected a day before.

"There is evidence to suggest that this may be due to viral shedding from a recovered past infection among the residents, but as a precautionary measure, the MOH carried out a special testing operations today to test residents of the affected apartments," it added.

A total of 438 people, excluding the recovered case, have been swabbed for COVID-19 during the testing operations, of which 437 results have come back negative, and one is pending, the MOH said on Wednesday.

99% of total cases have recovered, none in ICU

With 15 more patients discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities on Wednesday, 60,078 cases – or 99.7 per cent of the total – have fully recovered from the infection.

Most of the 25 hospitalised cases are stable or improving. None of them are in the intensive care unit.

A total of 103 patients – with mild symptoms or are clinically well but still test positive – are isolated and cared for at community facilities.

Apart from the 30 patients who have died from COVID-19 complications, 15 others who tested positive for the virus were determined to have died from unrelated causes, including three whose deaths were attributed to a heart attack and another four, whose deaths were attributed to coronary heart disease.

Among the 99 confirmed cases reported from 18 to 24 March, 33 cases have tested positive for their serology tests, 49 have tested negative, and 17 serology test results are pending.

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