Average number of new daily Covid-19 cases in S'pore continues to fall

[SINGAPORE] The number of new daily coronavirus patients here and the average number of new cases in the community each day have both come down in recent days, ahead of the further reopening of Singapore's economy from Friday.

While the daily number of new patients on Sunday (June 14) was 407, it was 214 on Monday and 151 on Tuesday.

The average number of new daily community cases has also dropped from nine cases two weeks ago to seven in the past week. The average number of unlinked community cases per day too has fallen from four to three over the same period.

The 151 new Covid-19 patients confirmed on Tuesday by the Ministry of Health (MOH) is the lowest number of new cases since April 8 when 142 cases were reported. No new clusters were announced.

Both community cases reported on Tuesday are work permit holders who are asymptomatic but were detected by the Ministry of Health's active screening of those working in essential services.

Both are men, aged 25 and 39, and are currently unlinked to previous cases.

Further tests by the ministry also showed that one of the cases was likely infected some time ago as he is no longer infectious. The result for the remaining case is pending.

Migrant workers living in dormitories make up the remaining 149 cases.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Manpower also said that 42 more dormitories housing about 4,000 migrant workers have been cleared of Covid-19, which means they can soon resume work after employers and migrant workers complete additional steps, including getting the workers to download the TraceTogether mobile app to facilitate contact tracing.

It also means that as of Monday, 67 of the 132 dormitories that have been cleared of Covid-19 have completed this process, allowing some 10,000 workers to resume working.

The latest 42 dormitories cleared comprise one purpose-built dormitory, 39 factory-converted dormitories and two construction temporary quarters.

There are 43 purpose-built dorms in Singapore housing about 200,000 workers and about 1,200 smaller factory-converted dormitories. Some 38,438 of the 323,000 migrant workers living in dorms have tested positive for the coronavirus as of Monday.

Meanwhile, Sri Murugan Trading at 86 Syed Alwi Road, the Sheng Siong Market at New World Centre at 1 Jalan Berseh and the Prime Supermarket at 803 King George's Avenue have been added to the list of public places visited by Covid-19 patients while they were still infectious.

The ministry provides this list of locations, where Covid-19 patients have visited for more than 30 minutes, to encourage people who were at these places to monitor their health closely for two weeks from the date of their visit.

It has said that close contacts would already have been notified and that there is no need to avoid these places as they would have been cleaned, if needed.

The full list can be found on MOH's website.

With 797 coronavirus patients discharged on Tuesday, a total of 31,153 patients have fully recovered from the disease.

A total of 269 patients remain in hospital, including two in the intensive care unit, while 9,511 are recuperating in community facilities.

Singapore has had 26 deaths from Covid-19 complications, while 10 who tested positive have died of other causes.

THE STRAITS TIMES