COVID-19: Singapore confirms 788 new cases and 7 more clusters, crosses 20,000 mark

SINGAPORE — The Ministry of Health (MOH) on Wednesday (6 May) confirmed 788 new coronavirus cases and seven more clusters in Singapore, bringing the total to 20,198.

The ministry also reported two additional deaths, bringing the city-state’s death toll from COVID-19 complications to 20.

Of the new cases, 759, or 96 per cent, are foreign workers living in dormitories due to extensive testing in such premises.

The remaining are 16 foreign workers residing outside dorms and 13 cases in the community, including 11 Singaporeans and permanent residents.

Of the 11 Singaporeans and PRs, four are linked to various dorms: two female administrative staff, 49 and 32, at North Coast Lodge, a female healthcare volunteer, 43, at Kranji Dormitory, and a male operations staff, 43, at Sungei Tengah Lodge.

Another case is a 64-year-old female patient at St Luke’s Hospital.

Overall, only seven per cent of the new cases have no established links.

The MOH said the number of new cases in the community has decreased from an average of 16 cases per day in the week before, to an average of ten per day in the past week.

Similarly, it added, the number of unlinked cases in the community has also decreased from an average of 9 cases per day in the week before, to an average of four per day in the past week.

“We will continue to closely monitor these numbers, as well as the cases detected through our surveillance programme,” said the ministry.

Separately, the number of new cases among foreign workers residing outside dorms has decreased slightly from an average of 16 cases per day in the week before, to an average of 15 per day in the past week.

The seven additional clusters are linked to 20 Benoi Lane, 5 Fourth Chin Bee Road, 36 & 38 Kian Teck Drive, Tampines Street 62, 14 Tech Park Crescent, 50A Tuas Link 4, and 35 Tuas View Walk 2.

The MOH also said that the Wilby Residences at 25 Wilby Road is now considered an inactive cluster as there have been no more cases linked to it for the past two incubation periods or 28 days.

More than 50 clusters linked to foreign worker dormitories have been identified thus far, including Singapore’s largest cluster of 2,526 cases linked to S11 Dormitory@Punggol, followed by Tuas View Dormitory linked to 1,137 cases and Sungei Tengah Lodge linked to 1,046 cases.

The three are among the 25 dorms that have been gazetted as isolation areas and account for 26.5 per cent of 17,757 total infected cases across all dorms.

Some 400,000 foreign workers live in dorms here in Singapore.

(For more details on the clusters, read here.)

115 more patients discharged; 23 in ICU

The MOH said on Wednesday that 115 more patients have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities. In all, 1,634 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged.

Most of the 1,462 hospitalised cases are stable or improving while 23 are in critical condition in the intensive care unit, down from 24 on Tuesday.

Apart from the 20 COVID-related deaths, six patients who tested positive for the virus have died from unrelated causes, including a 44-year-old Bangladeshi man who died of a heart attack on Tuesday.

As of 4 May, the ministry has conducted 175,604 swab tests, of which 123,525 were done on unique individuals.

This translates to about 30,800 swabs conducted per 1 million total population, and around 21,600 unique individuals swabbed per 1 million total population.

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