[ad_1]
SINGAPORE – The Ministry of Health (MINSA) confirmed 11 new cases in Singapore as of Friday (September 25), bringing the country’s total to 57,665.
The ministry also added three new places to its list of places visited by community cases while they were infectious: Ion Orchard, Paragon’s Muji store and Lucky Plaza, which was visited three times.
The 11 new cases are asymptomatic and proactively detected, the Health Ministry said. There are no cases in the community for the second day in a row, while there are two imported cases.
The remaining nine cases are foreign workers living in dormitories, of whom seven had previously been identified as contacts from previous cases and had already been quarantined, the Health Ministry said.
Overall, nine percent of new cases have no established links. MINSA said that the number of new cases in the community has remained stable at an average of less than one case per day in the last two weeks.
Similarly, the number of unrelated cases in the community has also remained stable at an average of less than one case per day in the past two weeks.
The imported cases are a work pass holder and a work permit holder currently employed here who arrived from India and the Philippines respectively on September 13. They had been placed on the 14-day stay-at-home notice upon arrival here and were screened while serving their notice at dedicated facilities, the Health Ministry said.
Two cases in bedrooms detected by surveillance tests
Among the nine cases residing in dormitories, seven had previously been identified as previous case contacts and were evaluated during quarantine, the Health Ministry said.
The remaining two cases were detected through surveillance tests, such as routine testing with biweekly lists of workers living in dormitories.
In a separate press release on Friday, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said 232 new cases had been detected through routine testing since Aug. 11, when all bedrooms were declared COVID-19 free.
When these new COVID-19 cases were detected, previously uninfected workers and those who have recovered 120 days from their infection living in the same block would be quarantined.
Following a review of more than 31 purpose-built dormitories, 20 settling sites, as well as 107 factory-converted dormitories and temporary construction rooms, the MOM said Assurance, Care & Engagement Group (ACE Group) will adopt a “more specific quarantine and differentiated Approaching “.
This will minimize work disruption and be more sustainable, he added.
Under the new approach, in dormitories that do not have intermingling between workers, where workers observe safe living measures, and where segregation measures that have been implemented by dormitory operators, workers can be quarantined by levels. or sections instead of full blocks, said MOM.
“Those who have recovered and are within 150 days of their infection will not be quarantined. This is in view of the latest medical evidence showing that these workers continue to have antibodies to protect themselves against reinfection, ”he added.
An example given would be Westlite Woodlands, where a new case was detected through the routine tests listed.
“With the above approach, we would have quarantined the 318 workers of the block. With the new differentiated and focused approach, only 68 workers (close contacts) were quarantined because adequate safe life measures were implemented to ensure adequate segregation, so that the remaining six levels were not affected, ”he said. the MOM.
The ministry added that the ACE Group will continue to refine its quarantine strategy, as advised by the Ministry of Health, and based “on the latest knowledge on how the spread of transmission occurs in bedroom groups, the specific risks in dormitories. individual dormitories and the susceptibility of recovered workers to reinfection ”.
Of Singapore’s COVID-19 count, 54,379, or 94.3 percent, are foreign workers living in dormitories.
99% of all cases have recovered.
With eight more patients discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities on Friday, 57,341 cases, or 99.4 percent of the total, have fully recovered from the infection.
Most of the 29 hospitalized cases are stable or improving, while none are critically ill in the intensive care unit.
