COVID-19: Singapore confirms 632 new cases and 9 more clusters, crosses 19,000 mark

SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed on Tuesday (5 May) 632 new COVID-19 cases and nine new clusters in Singapore, bringing the total to 19,410 – the highest recorded in Southeast Asia.

The city-state also confirmed that a 44-year-old Bangladeshi man died of a heart attack on Tuesday, its sixth such fatality who had tested positive for the virus and died of unrelated causes.

Of the new cases, 605, or about 96 per cent, are foreign workers living in dormitories due to extensive testing conducted within such premises.

The remaining cases are 15 foreign workers residing outside dorms and 12 cases in the community including eight Singaporeans and permanent residents.

Overall, only three per cent of the new cases have no established links. One of them is a 20-year-old Singaporean man who works as a nurse at the Singapore EXPO, one of three community care facilities here.

He is the third known healthcare worker linked to the EXPO to be confirmed as infected, after a 52-year-old healthcare volunteer who tested positive for the virus on Monday as well as a 34-year-old Health Promotion Board nurse who was deployed to the community care facility and tested positive last Saturday.

The man, identified as case 19360, had no recent travel history to affected countries or regions. He tested positive for the virus on Tuesday and is currently warded at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases. Prior to his hospital admission, he had gone to work.

The MOH said the number of new cases in the community has decreased from an average of 17 cases per day in the week before, to an average of 10 per day in the past week.

It added that the number of unlinked cases in the community has also decreased from an average of 10 cases per day in the week before, to an average of five per day in the past week.

“We will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme,” said the ministry.

Separately, the number of new cases amongst foreign workers residing outside dorms has also decreased from an average of 18 cases per day in the week before, to an average of 15 per day in the past week.

The nine additional clusters are 60 Benoi Road, 100A Central Boulevard, a construction site at Clementi N2C3, 1 North Coast Drive, 31 Sungei Kadut Loop, 9 Tech Park Crescent, 80 Tuas Avenue 1, 15 Tuas View Close, and 131 Tuas View Square.

More than 50 clusters linked to foreign worker dormitories have been identified thus far, including Singapore’s largest cluster of 2,525 cases linked to S11 Dormitory@Punggol, followed by Tuas View Dormitory linked to 1,089 cases and Sungei Tengah Lodge linked to 1,018 cases.

The three are among the 25 dorms that have been gazetted as isolation areas and account for some 27 per cent of the total 16,998 infected cases across dorms. Some 400,000 foreign workers live in dorms here in Singapore.

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

62 more patients discharged; 24 in ICU

The MOH said on Tuesday that 62 more patients have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 1,519 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged.

Most of the 1,584 hospitalised cases are stable or improving while 24 are in critical condition in the intensive care unit, down from 25 on Monday.

Eighteen people have succumbed to COVID-19 complications, including an 86-year-old Singaporean woman who died on Sunday.

As of 27 April, the ministry has conducted 143,919 swab tests, of which 99,929 were done on unique individuals. This translates to about 25,200 swabs conducted per 1 million total population, and around 17,500 unique individuals swabbed per 1 million total population.

Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore

Related stories:

COVID-19: China donates 600,000 face masks to Singapore

COVID-19: Man who stabbed NParks officer to be charged with attempted murder

About 40 instances of COVID-19 'fake news' debunked since January: S Iswaran

COVID-19: Migrant workers were on MOM's radar since January – Josephine Teo

COVID-19: Singapore to expand testing capacity, 'strategically' deploy resources

COVID-19: Gan Kim Yong outlines 3 indicators for easing circuit breaker measures

COVID-19: All MPs required to wear face masks in Parliament