17 new Covid-19 cases in Singapore, five are linked to TTSH cluster

[SINGAPORE] There were 17 new coronavirus cases confirmed by the Ministry of Health (MOH) as at Tuesday noon, taking Singapore's total to 61,252.

Of these, five are from the community while none were from migrant workers' dormitories.

All of them were detected from MOH's proactive testing of patients, visitors and staff at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) or their close contacts, and had already been placed on quarantine.

In total, 40 cases are now linked to the TTSH cluster. It is the largest of nine active clusters in Singapore.

There were also 12 imported cases who had been placed on stay-home notices on arrival in Singapore.

More details will be announced on Tuesday night.

On Monday, eight more Covid-19 cases were linked to the TTSH cluster, including five patients from Ward 9D, where the first case in the cluster was picked up.

All eight had initially tested negative for the virus, and were picked up in subsequent rounds of testing, the Health Ministry said.

The remaining two cases in the community announced on Monday are linked to the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officer cluster, taking the total case tally for the cluster to 11.

There has been spike in community cases, with MOH reporting on Monday that the number of new cases increased to 60 cases in the past week from 10 in the week before.

The number of unlinked cases in the community also rose to 10 cases in the past week from four cases in the week before.

Of the eight cases added to the TTSH cluster on Monday, five are patients, aged between 53 and 94, who were transferred to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases for isolation on April 28.

Two are nurses and one is a porter employed by UEMS who was deployed to TTSH.

The remaining two community cases are close contacts of the 38-year-old ICA officer who had been placed on quarantine on Aug 27.

One is a 37-year-old homemaker married to a family member of the ICA officer. The other is her three-year-old son.

They initially tested negative for Covid-19 on Aug 28.

On May 1, they were tested again even though they were asymptomatic and their test results came back positive for the infection the next day.

There were also seven imported cases who had been placed on stay-home notice on arrival here.

Globally, the virus outbreak, which began in December 2019, has infected more than 153 million people. More than 3.21 million people have died.

THE STRAITS TIMES