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SINGAPORE – The Ministry of Health (MINSA) confirmed 75 new cases of COVID-19 in Singapore, its highest daily count in more than a week, bringing the country’s total to 57,166 on Wednesday (September 9).
All 75 cases are asymptomatic and were proactively detected, the ministry said.
Of these, one is classified as a Community case, while 14 are imported cases, including nine that arrived from India.
The remaining 60 cases are foreign workers living in dormitories, of which 31 are from the Westlite Toh Guan dormitory. A total of 29 workers had previously been identified as contacts from previous cases and had already been quarantined, the Health Ministry said.
Overall, eight percent of new cases have no established links.
The only case from the community was detected through the enumerated routine tests of workers in the construction, marine and process sectors living outside the dormitories. It is one of 189 cases linked to the Kenyon / UBS construction site group.
Two Singaporeans and seven permanent residents, among the 14 imported cases, returned to Singapore from India on August 24-28, and to Ghana on August 28.
Four others are work pass or permit holders currently working in Singapore and arrived from the Philippines and India on August 28. The remaining case is the holder of a student pass who arrived from Kazakhstan on August 29.
All of them had been placed on the 14-day stay-at-home notice upon arrival here, and had been assessed while fulfilling their notice at dedicated facilities, the Health Ministry said.
The ministry noted that the number of new cases in the community has decreased, from an average of three cases per day in the previous week, to an average of two per day in the past week.
Similarly, the number of unrelated cases in the community has also decreased, from an average of two cases per day in the previous week, to an average of one per day in the last week.
More than half of bedroom cases detected by surveillance tests
Among the 60 cases residing in dormitories, 29 had previously been identified as previous case contacts and were tested during quarantine to determine their status.
The remaining 31 cases were detected through surveillance tests, such as the routine tests listed every two weeks of workers living in dormitories.
A large majority of the 31 cases in the Westlite Toh Guan dormitory had been previously quarantined and tested during quarantine to determine their status, the Health Ministry said.
In addition to the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, or swab test, serological tests were also performed to determine whether some of the cases are current or past infections, the ministry added.
“The results of the serological tests of 22 cases have been positive so far, indicating probable past infections,” he said.
Human Resources Deputy Minister Tan See Leng, during a virtual press conference led by the multi-ministerial COVID-19 task force on Wednesday night, called the inscribed routine testing system a “key lever” in the detection strategy of the authorities.
The PCR test may not have detected the low viral load of the infected cases in the bedrooms, as the results depend on when it was administered during the virus’s incubation cycle, he said.
Since the dormitories were declared COVID-19 free on August 11, around 45 new cases of COVID-19 have been detected daily among those places of residence.
“That’s why we adjusted the trawl by implementing this routine checklist test after another,” explained Dr. Tan.
To date, 90 percent of the workers have been scheduled for testing and authorities expect to reach 100 percent in the next few weeks, he said.
These dormitory-living workers account for 94.4 percent, or 53,975 cases, of Singapore’s total COVID-19 count.
About 99% of all cases have recovered
With 31 more patients discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities on Wednesday, 56,492 cases, or 98.9% of the total, have fully recovered from the infection.
Most of the 34 hospitalized cases are stable or improving, while none are in critical condition in the intensive care unit.
A total of 613 patients with mild symptoms or who are clinically well but still test positive are isolated and cared for in community facilities.
