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SINGAPORE: Singapore’s five new COVID-19 infections as of noon on Wednesday (November 18) were imported cases.
No cases of local transmission were reported for the eighth consecutive day.
Three of the imported cases are work permit holders, ages 23, 30 and 33, who came from Myanmar.
Another case involved a 15-year-old student pass holder who arrived from India.
The remaining case is a 70-year-old Bangladeshi short-term visit pass holder who was allowed entry because he was already receiving medical care in Singapore and had returned for further treatment, the Health Ministry said ( MINSA).
All the cases were asymptomatic, the Health Ministry said, adding that they were placed on a stay-at-home notice or isolated upon arrival in Singapore.
The new infections bring the country’s COVID-19 case count to 58,135.
Seven more cases have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities, bringing Singapore’s total recoveries to 58,046.
There are 33 cases still in the hospital. Most of them are stable or improving and no one is in the intensive care unit. Another 28 are being isolated and cared for in community facilities.
To date, 28 have died from complications due to COVID-19 infection.
The Ministry of Health also announced that since there have been no more cluster-linked cases in ASPRI-Westlite Papan in 5 Jalan Papan during the last two incubation periods, the cluster is now closed.
He added that he has been monitoring the existing clusters for any additional streams.
More details can be found in the daily situation report of the Ministry of Health.
VACCINE UPDATES
Pfizer is “very close” to requesting an emergency use approval for its COVID-19 vaccine after collecting safety data to send to US regulators, the company’s CEO said Tuesday.
The pharmaceutical giant announced last week that a late-stage clinical trial showed the vaccine was more than 90 percent effective after the second dose.
READ: The vaccine will not be enough to stop the COVID-19 pandemic: WHO chief
Explainer: Where are we in the COVID-19 vaccine race?
On Monday, Moderna and the US National Institutes of Health announced similar preliminary results from their own trial, and found that their vaccine was nearly 95 percent effective.
Sinovac Biotech’s CoronaVac vaccine triggered a rapid immune response, but the level of antibodies produced was lower than in people who had recovered from the disease, preliminary results of the trial showed Wednesday.
While the early to mid-stage trials were not designed to evaluate the efficacy of CoronaVac, the researchers said it could provide sufficient protection, based on their experience with other vaccines and data from preclinical studies with macaques.
READ: Shot in the Dark: COVID-19 Vaccine Early Efficacy Explained
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has received “encouraging” news about COVID-19 vaccines. However, he expressed concern about the increase in cases in many countries and insisted that complacency was not an option.
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