623 new virus cases take S'pore tally past 5,000 mark; mostly foreign workers in dormitories

[SINGAPORE] Singapore reported 623 new coronavirus cases yesterday, dipping slightly from Thursday's high of 728 and bringing the total number of cases here to 5,050.

In keeping with the recent trend, most of yesterday's new cases - 558 of them - were linked to foreign workers in dormitories.

This takes the number of workers in dorms infected with Covid-19 to more than 3,200 - more than 60 per cent of the total cases here.

Meanwhile, a 95-year-old Singaporean man, whose infection was confirmed on Monday, became the 11th person here to die of Covid-19.

The average number of new cases per day in the community dropped to 32 over the past week, from 40 the week before. A total of 27 new coronavirus infections were reported within the local community yesterday, with no new clusters linked to the community emerging.

This indicates that the circuit breaker measures appear to have helped, the Ministry of Health (MOH) noted yesterday, though the figures over the next few days need to be monitored carefully.

"We are particularly concerned that it is increasingly difficult to link the new cases and identify the source of infection," said MOH. In fact, the number of unlinked cases in the community has increased slightly to an average of 22 per day in the past week, from an average of 19 cases per day in the week before.

MOH added that it has detected some cases through an ongoing surveillance programme, where a small sample of patients at general practitioner clinics and polyclinics are tested for Covid-19. "We have picked up some cases through these tests, which is an indication of undetected cases in the community."

An imported case was also announced yesterday - the first one since April 9. The person was serving a stay-home notice, said MOH.

As for dormitories, about 1 per cent of the 323,000 living in dorms have so far been infected, up from the 0.83 per cent reported on Thursday.

With the emergence of three new clusters in large purpose-built dormitories yesterday, more than half of the 43 large purpose-built dormitories have clusters now. There are also at least 12 clusters at smaller factory-converted dormitories.

Kranji Lodge 1 dormitory was yesterday declared an isolation area, bringing the total number of dormitories that have been gazetted as such to 13. Workers at these lodgings must be quarantined in their rooms for 14 days.

Dr Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious diseases expert who practises at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital, expects the number of new cases to remain above 300 for the next few days at least. "We know there will be a spike because we are actively seeking out cases. We pay the price of high cases now to get the flattening of the epidemic curve later."

A sequential fall in the number of new cases will indicate that the situation is improving, he added.

In a Facebook post yesterday, Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs the multi-ministry task force tackling the outbreak, said teams have been "working doubly hard" to sweep through the dorms and test the workers. The government is also preparing additional facilities to accommodate infected and recovered patients.

"Covid-19 will be with us for many more months, and likely beyond the end of the year. We have to be prepared for future waves of infection and we have to steel ourselves for a long fight," said Mr Wong.

THE STRAITS TIMES