2. Overall, the number of new cases in the community has remained stable at an average of 1 case per day in the past 2 weeks. The number of unlinked cases in the community has also remained stable at an average of fewer than 1 case per day in the past 2 weeks. We will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme.
3. Of the new cases, 86% are imported or linked to known cases/ clusters, while the rest are pending contact tracing.
There is 1 case in the community today who is a family member of previously confirmed cases. Case 58015 had been identified as a contact of Cases 57890 and 57945, and had been placed on quarantine earlier. Cases 57890 and 57945 had arrived from Indonesia on 25 September, and were granted permission to serve SHN at home as Case 57945 is a 2-month old infant. As a precautionary measure, Case 58015 was placed on SHN as well due to his exposure to them, even though he had not travelled with his family. He had not left his place of residence since. He subsequently developed symptoms during quarantine and was tested positive for COVID-19 infection.
b) Cases residing in dormitories: 1There is 1 case residing in a dormitory who was detected through our bi-weekly Rostered Routine Testing of workers living in dormitories. This allows us to pick up cases early, including asymptomatic ones, so that we are able to ring-fence them quickly to prevent further transmission, by aggressively containing, tracing and isolating the close contacts.
c) Imported cases: 5Amongst the 5 imported cases, 1 (Case 58018) is a Singapore Permanent Resident and 1 (Case 58019) is a Singaporean who returned from Belarus and Qatar respectively. Another case (Case 58020) is currently employed in Singapore who arrived from France. The remaining 2 cases (Cases 58013 and 58014) are sea crew who arrived in Singapore to board a ship docked here. They were conveyed directly from the airport to the ship in a dedicated vehicle upon arrival in Singapore, and had not left the ship subsequently.
They had all been placed on 14-day SHN upon arrival in Singapore, and were tested while serving SHN even though all of them are asymptomatic.
4. Details of these trends can be found in MOH’s daily situation Report (
www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/situation-report).
5. Epidemiological investigations are in progress. In the meantime, all the identified close contacts of the cases have been isolated and placed on quarantine, and will be tested at the start and end of their quarantine period so that we can detect asymptomatic cases. We will also conduct serological tests for the close contacts to determine if the cases could have been infected by them.
Links between previous cases found
6. Further epidemiological investigations and contact tracing have uncovered links between previously announced and new cases. Please refer to
Annex A and
Annex B for details.
Update on condition of confirmed cases7. 23 more cases of COVID-19 infection have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 57,698 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities.
8. There are currently 40 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and 1 is in critical condition in the intensive care unit. 101 are isolated and cared for at community facilities. These are those who have mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for COVID-19. 27 have passed away from complications due to COVID-19 infection.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH
10 OCTOBER 2020