SINGAPORE, April 24 — Singapore’s Ministry of Health today confirmed an additional 897 cases of COVID-19 infection, raising the tally for the republic to 12,075.
The ministry attributed the vast majority of the cases to foreign worker residing in dormitories while only 13 cases are Singaporeans or Permanent Residents.
In a statement here, MOH said it is still working through the details of the cases, and further updates will be shared later in the day.
As at noon Thursday, Singapore recorded 1,037 new cases of COVID-19 infection with no imported cases, 22 cases in the community while 30 involved work permit holders residing outside dormitories.
About 95 per cent of yesterday’s new cases were dorm residents.
In a detailed statement issued late Thursday, the MOH said it was picking up many more cases because of extensive testing.
“Most of these cases have a mild illness and are being monitored in community isolation facilities or general ward of our hospitals. None of them is in the intensive care unit,” it said.
The MOH noted that of yesterday’s new cases, 75 per cent are linked to known clusters, while the rest are pending contact tracing.
In the past week – April 16 to 22 -, the ministry said it has uncovered links for 1,024 previously unlinked cases.
Meanwhile, in all, 924 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities, 26 are in critical condition in the intensive care unit, while 12 have died.
As of April 23, Singapore has identified six more new clusters which were mostly dorms, namely Blue Stars Dormitory; Hulett Dormitory; Seatown Dormitory; Woodlands Dormitory; 12 Loyang Drive; and 59 Sungei Kadut Loop.
Singapore’s largest cluster, S11 Dormitory @ Punggol has so far a total of 2,234 confirmed cases.
From yesterday’s tally of 11,178, Singapore classified 9,076 of them as dorm residents, while 432 involving work permit holders not residing in dorms, 1,101 community cases and another 569 were imported cases.
