SINGAPORE, Jan 25 — Singapore reported 44 new cases of Covid-19 today, all of them imported. There were no cases in the wider community, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said.
All of the imported cases had been placed on stay-home notices upon their arrival here.
Forty of them had no symptoms, the ministry said.The 44 imported cases are:
■ Four Singaporeans and two permanent residents who returned from Indonesia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States
■ Seven dependant’s pass holders who arrived from India, Russia and the United Arab Emirates
■ One long-term visit pass holder who arrived from the US
■ Three student’s pass holders who arrived from France, Indonesia and Kazakhstan
■ Six work pass holders who arrived from Bangladesh, India, Japan, Poland and Spain
■ Seventeen work permit holders who arrived from Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Malaysia, three of whom are foreign domestic workers
■ Four short-term visit pass holders who arrived from India to visit their relatives here
The Singaporean who returned from the UK is a 19-year-old woman who arrived here on Dec 6 and served her stay-home notice at a dedicated facility until Dec 20.MOH said that the woman’s swab test done during quarantine on Dec 16 was negative for the virus.
The woman has no symptoms and her case was detected when she took a Covid-19 pre-departure test on Jan 23 in preparation for her return to the UK.
Her test result came back positive yesterday and she was subsequently taken to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases.
MOH said that the woman’s Ct value was very high, which is indicative of a low viral load, and that her serology test result has also come back positive.
“Given that these indicate a likely past infection, we have classified the case as imported based on her travel history. She is likely to be shedding minute fragments of the virus RNA, which are no longer transmissible and infective to others,” the ministry said.
Separately, MOH also said that the number of new cases in the community has gone up from 10 in the week before to 13 in the past week.
The number of cases with no known links in the community has, however, gone down slightly from four in the week before to three in the past week.
Updates on remaining cases
The total number of infections in Singapore is now 59,352.
Of these, 59,066 people have fully recovered and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities, including 25 today.
There are still 59 patients in hospitals and most are in stable condition or improving. No one is in intensive care.
Another 198 patients are isolated at community facilities. They have mild symptoms or are clinically well but still tested positive for Covid-19.Twenty-nine people have died from complications due to the disease. — TODAY
