13 new Covid-19 cases in Singapore, all imported

[SINGAPORE] There were 13 new coronavirus cases confirmed as at Friday noon, taking Singapore's total to 59,913.

They were all imported cases who had been placed on stay-home notices on arrival in Singapore, said the Ministry of Health (MOH).

There were no community cases and no cases from migrant workers' dormitories.

More details will be announced on Friday night.

On Thursday, a 27-year-old teacher at the Yishun branch of Berries World of Learning School, a Chinese-language enrichment centre, tested positive for Covid-19.

The Singapore permanent resident developed a runny nose on Tuesday after work and went to a general practitioner the next day, where she was tested for the coronavirus.

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Her test came back positive on Thursday, and she was taken to Singapore General Hospital.

As a precautionary measure, the centre where she works will be closed until Sunday for cleaning and disinfection.

The other community case confirmed on Thursday is a 33-year-old Malaysian man who works at PSA in the West Coast port area.

He was asymptomatic and was tested on Sunday as part of rostered routine testing. He was confirmed to have the infection on Wednesday.

He had received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, with his second dose taken on Feb 14.

"As it typically takes a few weeks for an individual to build up immunity after completing vaccination, he was likely to have been infected before he was conferred protection after vaccination," said MOH.

There were also eight imported cases confirmed on Thursday.

The eight imported cases comprised individuals arriving from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Also, national water agency PUB began vaccinating its staff against Covid-19 on Thursday, prioritising engineers and technicians whose work requires them to frequent its water plants.

PUB said more than 4,000 staff and contractors are to be vaccinated over the coming months.

Globally, the virus outbreak, which began in December 2019, has infected more than 112 million people. Over 2.4 million people have died.

THE STRAITS TIMES