SINGAPORE, Nov 8 — Some 3,300 reported Covid-19 cases were contracted in healthcare facilities, of which around 300 were from clusters in hospitals and around 3,000 from nursing homes, between April and September this year, Senior Minister of State for Health Janil Puthucheary said yesterday (November 7).
This constituted less than 1 per cent of the total reported community cases during this period, he said.
The minister was responding to a parliamentary question from Workers' Party Member of Parliament (MP) Sylvia Lim on the number of patients who contracted Covid-19 infections from within residential healthcare facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes.
Lim, who is the MP for Aljunied Group Representation Constituency, also asked how confident the minister was that the reported numbers were not underestimates, since patients could be asymptomatic and healthcare facilities do not engage in daily testing.
Dr Puthucheary acknowledged that the numbers may be underestimates, as daily testing was not conducted on all persons at healthcare facilities, including workers and visitors.
He added that healthcare facilities have instead taken a risk-based approach on testing, since the ministry has data on Covid-19 clusters and transmissions. This allows scientists to model the transmission and clusters of Covid-19 within different settings and set different measures according to different risk levels.
Lim then cited some studies conducted in the United Kingdom that suggested patient-to-patient transmissions within healthcare facilities as a more common cause of Covid-19 infections than healthcare worker-to-patient transmissions.
Lim asked whether the ministry was studying this issue, and to elaborate on the nature of transmissions within healthcare facilities in Singapore.
Dr Puthucheary replied that this would require a detailed study to understand whether patient-to-patient transmissions affected the spread of Covid-19 infections more than healthcare worker-to-patient transmissions.
Citing other studies, Lim noted that hospital-acquired infections may be affected by ventilation systems and design of wards, and asked whether the ministry was looking into these matters.
In response, Dr Puthucheary confirmed that the ministry has been looking into factors that could affect the rate of Covid-19 transmissions within healthcare facilities.
Lim also asked whether the ministry was satisfied with the effectiveness of the current Covid-19 measures implemented at these facilities.
In his reply, Dr Puthucheary said: “As we move towards living with Covid-19, we no longer adopt a zero-Covid posture in hospitals and nursing homes, where all patients or nursing home residents need to be tested before admission and where infected patients are isolated in hospital Covid wards.
“Notwithstanding these measures, we continue to take necessary precautions to protect patients and residents, and are ready to step up the Covid-19 measures, such as visitor restrictions, when necessary.”
Dr Puthucheary added that vaccination remains the primary defence against the coronavirus, particularly in preventing severe illness from the infection. Over 90 per cent of eligible nursing home residents have been vaccinated, he said.
This, along with other measures, has kept Singapore’s overall case fatality rate at about 0.1 per cent, well below the global average of around 1 per cent, he noted. ― TODAY
