SINGAPORE – There were 170 new coronavirus cases confirmed as of Saturday noon (July 11), taking Singapore’s total to 45,783.

They include 24 community cases, comprising seven Singaporeans or permanent residents and 17 work pass holders, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Saturday.

Of these 24 community cases, five are close contacts of earlier cases, and had already been placed on quarantine. Epidemiological investigations are being done for the other cases.

There is also one imported case, who was placed on stay-home notice upon arrival in Singapore.

Migrant workers living in dormitories make up the vast majority of the other cases.

More details will be announced on Saturday night.

On Friday, MOH said that two of the community cases announced then – a seven-year-old girl and an 18-year-old boy, both Singaporeans – are family members of a known family cluster at a Tampines Housing Board block where nine people were earlier found to be infected.

MOH had said that the two new cases had been earlier quarantined and, so far, there was no evidence of the disease spreading beyond the two affected households at Block 111 Tampines Street 11.

Of the community cases announced on Friday, five were picked up as a result of MOH’s proactive surveillance and screening, and eight had already been placed in quarantine earlier.

Ten of the cases were asymptomatic, and were detected through proactive testing.

Of the community cases, eight were linked to previous cases or clusters, including the two patients linked to the Tampines HDB block.

The remaining eight community cases were unlinked at the time.

Of these, five patients were detected from MOH’s proactive testing. Four of them work in essential services, even though three of them were asymptomatic.

Another patient was swabbed as part of MOH’s efforts to screen individuals working in front-line Covid-19 operations.

The remaining three cases were symptomatic, and were tested under MOH’s enhanced community testing to test all individuals aged 13 and above who are diagnosed with acute respiratory infection when they first visit a doctor.

The serological test result for one patient was positive, which suggests a likely past infection.

The average number of new daily cases in the community during a week has increased from nine cases two weeks ago to 16 in the past week.

The number of unlinked cases in the community during a week has increased from a daily average of five cases to nine over the same period.

Among the new places visited by Covid-19 patients while they were still infectious that were listed by MOH on Friday were Nex mall, City Plaza, Marina Bay Sands, Rivervale Plaza, the Bake with Yen bakery products shop in Bukit Merah Central, and the RuLe YoUr CuTz 2 barber shop in Jurong East.

The ministry provides the list of locations that Covid-19 patients visited for at least 30 minutes to get those who were at these places to monitor their health closely for two weeks from the date of their visit.

It has said that close contacts would already have been notified and that there is no need to avoid these places as they would have been cleaned if needed.

With 135 cases discharged on Friday, 41,766 patients have fully recovered from the disease.

A total of 203 patients remain in hospital, including one in the intensive care unit, while 3,604 are recuperating in community facilities.

Singapore has had 26 deaths from Covid-19 complications, while 14 who tested positive have died of other causes.

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