17 new COVID cases in Singapore, all imported

SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed 17 new COVID-19 cases in Singapore on Thursday (25 March), taking the country's total case count to 60,253.

All cases are imported and there are no local infections reported for the 13th day in a row. "Amongst the new cases today, 16 are asymptomatic, and were detected from our proactive screening and surveillance, while one was symptomatic," said the MOH.

Among the 17 imported cases, one is a 42-year-old Singaporean woman – Thursday's sole symptomatic case – and another is a permanent resident who returned from India.

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

Eleven others are work permit holders who arrived from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, of whom seven are foreign domestic workers.

The remaining case is a short-term visit pass holder who arrived from Ecuador for a work project.

All imported cases were placed on the stay-home notice or isolated upon their arrival here and were tested for COVID-19.

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

It also announced the closure of the "case 60102" cluster as there have been no more cases linked to itfor the past two incubation periods, or 28 days. With its closure, there are currently no open clusters of COVID-19 infections in Singapore.

438 NUS UTown hostel residents tested negative

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," added the ministry.

As of Thursday, 438 people, excluding the recovered case, have been swabbed for COVID-19 during the testing operations, of which all results have come back negative.

99% of total cases have recovered, none in ICU

With eight more patients discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities on Thursday, 60,086 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 112 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.

Amongst the 101 confirmed cases reported from 19 to 25 March, 34 cases have tested positive for their serology tests, 48 have tested negative, and 19 serology test results are pending.

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