838 More Cases Discharged, 614 New Cases of COVID-19 Infection Confirmed

          As of 22 May 2020, 12pm, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has confirmed and verified an additional 614 cases of COVID-19 infection in Singapore. The breakdown is as follows:

a)            Imported cases: 0

There are no imported cases today.

b)            Cases in the community¹ : 4 (4 Singaporeans/Permanent Residents)

The number of new cases in the community has increased, from an average of 5 cases per day in the week before, to an average of 7 per day in the past week. This is partly due to our active surveillance and screening of nursing home residents and pre-school staff, which have picked up more cases in the past week. The number of unlinked cases in the community has remained stable at an average of 2 per day in the past two weeks. We will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme.

c)            Cases residing in dormitories: 610

We continue to pick up many cases amongst Work Permit holders residing in dormitories, including in factory-converted dormitories, because of extensive testing in these premises, as part of our process to verify and test the status of all workers.

2.            Details of these trends can be found in MOH’s daily situation Report (www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/situation-report). Please refer to Annex A for the summary of the confirmed cases.

3.            Of the new cases, 99% are linked to known clusters, while the rest are pending contact tracing.

Links between previous cases found

4.            In the past week (15 May to 21 May), MOH has uncovered links for 2 previously unlinked cases.

5.            Further epidemiological investigations and contact tracing have uncovered links between previously announced and new cases. Please refer to Annex B and Annex C for details.

Update on condition of confirmed cases

6.            838 more cases of COVID-19 infection have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 12,955 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities.

7.            There are currently 798 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and eight are in critical condition in the intensive care unit. 16,650 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. 23 have passed away from complications due to COVID-19 infection.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH
22 MAY 2020

¹ Previously we had tracked the work permit holders living outside dormitories as a separate category, and put a large number of these workers on Stay Home Notices (SHN). The SHN for these workers has since expired. Hence we have now updated the definition of “Cases in the Community” to include all cases (including amongst Work Permit holders) who are detected outside of the dormitories.