COVID-19: Singapore confirms 570 new cases and 842 more recoveries

SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed on Wednesday (20 May) 570 new COVID-19 cases in Singapore, bringing the total to 29,364, as well as 842 more recoveries.

The ministry also reported two additional clusters linked to 29 Senoko South Road and 144 Tagore Lane.

Of the 570 new cases, 562 are foreign workers living in dormitories.

The remaining eight are community cases, including a 57-year-old Singaporean man who went to work at the Kranji Lodge I dorm – an active cluster linked to 511 cases – a 30-year-old Filipina nurse who works at Ren Ci Community Hospital and a permanent resident.

The 30-year-old Filipina nurse, identified as case 29069, had no recent travel history to affected countries or regions. She tested positive on Thursday and is currently warded at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases. The nurse had not gone to work since developing the symptoms.

Five work permit holders have also been classified as cases within the community – two had been identified as contacts of earlier confirmed cases and had already been placed on quarantine, while epidemiological investigations are ongoing for the remaining three.

On the reclassification, the MOH said, “Previously we had tracked the work permit holders living outside dormitories as a separate category and put a large number of these workers on stay-home notices (SHN).”

“The SHN for these workers has since expired. Hence we have now updated the definition of “cases in the community” to include all cases (including amongst work permit holders) who are detected outside of the dormitories,” it added.

Overall, only one per cent of the new cases have no established links.

The ministry said that the number of new cases in the community has decreased from an average of eight cases per day in the week before, to an average of five per day in the past week.

It added that the number of unlinked cases in the community has also decreased from an average of three cases per day in the week before, to an average of two per day in the past week.

Separately, it said that a cluster linked to a construction site at Project Glory – located at 50 Market Street – is now closed and considered inactive as it had not been linked to new cases for the past two incubation periods or 28 days.

Dozens of clusters linked to foreign worker dorms have been identified thus far, including Singapore’s largest cluster of 2,586 cases linked to S11 Dormitory@Punggol, followed by Sungei Tengah Lodge linked to 1,861 cases and Tuas View Dormitory linked to 1,308 cases.

The three are among the 25 dorms that have been gazetted as isolation areas and account for some 21 per cent of 27,106 total infected foreign workers residing in dorms here. Some 400,000 foreign workers live in dorms here in Singapore.

Some 20,000 infected workers are expected to be discharged by end-May, said National Development Minister Lawrence Wong at a press conference last Tuesday.

(For more details on the clusters, read here.)

Over 11,200 discharged in total

With 842 more cases of COVID-19 infection discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities, a total of 11,207 cases here have fully recovered from the infection, said the ministry on Wednesday.

Most of the 954 hospitalised cases are stable or improving, while 11 are in critical condition in the intensive care unit, up from 10 on Tuesday.

A total of 17,181 patients who have mild symptoms or are clinically well but still test positive are isolated and cared for at community facilities.

Apart from 22 patients who have died from COVID-19 complications, nine others who tested positive for the virus have died from unrelated causes, including three whose deaths were attributed to a heart attack and two whose deaths were attributed to coronary heart disease.

“Only cases where the attending doctor or pathologist attributes the primary or underlying cause of death as due to COVID-19 infection will be added to the COVID-19 death count,” said the MOH in previous press releases, adding that the method of assessment is consistent with international practices for classifying deaths.

It had also noted that 86 male foreign workers aged 25 to 59 died due to heart disease in Singapore in 2018.

As of 18 May, the ministry has conducted 294,414 swab tests, of which 191,260 were done on unique individuals.

This translates to around 51,600 swabs conducted per 1 million total population, and about 33,500 unique individuals swabbed per 1 million total population.

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