All 13 new COVID cases in Singapore imported, including 7 foreign domestic workers

SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Health (MOH) has confirmed the detection of 13 new cases of COVID-19 infection in Singapore as of noon on Tuesday (29 December), taking the country’s total case count to 58,542.

There are no new cases of locally-transmitted infection.

“Amongst the new cases today, 10 are asymptomatic, and were detected from our proactive screening and surveillance, while three were symptomatic,” said the MOH.

Amongst the 13 imported cases, one is a Singaporean, and two are permanent residents who returned from Indonesia, US, and India.

Nine others are work permit holders who arrived from Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Indonesia, of whom seven are foreign domestic workers.

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

All of them were placed on the stay-home notice or isolated upon their arrival here and were tested while serving the notice or under isolation.

The ministry noted that the number of new cases in the community has remained low, with a total of one case in the past week who is currently unlinked.

99% of total cases have recovered

With 14 more patients discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities on Tuesday, 58,400 cases – or 99.8 per cent of the total – have fully recovered from the infection.

Most of the 37 hospitalised cases are stable or improving, and none are in the intensive care unit.

A total of 76 patients – with mild symptoms or are clinically well but still test positive – are isolated and cared for at community facilities.

Apart from 29 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.

The MOH on 23 December confirmed the city-state’s first case infected with a new variant of the novel coronavirus that is spreading rapidly in the UK. Eleven others have tested preliminarily positive for the B.1.1.7 strain.

Singapore entered Phase 3 of reopening on Monday.

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