SINGAPORE – Three new clusters of coronavirus infections – all in dormitories – were announced by the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Saturday (Sept 5).

Cochrane Lodge I, Mandai Lodge I and Tuas South Dormitory were linked to nine, 17 and 11 earlier confirmed cases respectively.

There were three community cases reported on Saturday, comprising one Singaporean and two work pass holders. MOH said all three cases are currently unlinked and asymptomatic, and were detected through proactive testing.

The Singaporean had travelled to Malaysia but was denied entry at the airport due to administrative reasons.

He tested negative while in Malaysia, and was placed on stay-home notice at a dedicated facility upon arrival in Singapore the next day. He subsequently tested positive while serving his stay-home notice.

The other two cases were detected as a result of rostered routine testing of workers in the construction, marine and process sectors who are living outside the dormitories.

There were two imported cases, both Singaporeans who tested positive while serving their stay-home notices. The first returned from India on Aug 24 and the other from Australia on Aug 25.

Waterway Point in Punggol and Seletar Mall were the latest to be added to the list of places visited by infectious Covid-19 patients.

Migrant workers staying in dormitories made up the remaining 29 of the 34 new coronavirus patients announced on Saturday, taking Singapore’s total to 56,982.

Among the 29, 14 were identified earlier as contacts of previous cases, and had already been quarantined to prevent further transmission. They were tested during their quarantine period.

The remaining 15 cases were detected through surveillance testing, such as biweekly rostered routine testing of workers in dormitories.

MOH said earlier on Saturday evening that 41 Covid-19 cases have been removed from Singapore’s total tally “due to administrative errors”.

The administrative errors included wrongly recorded or duplicated entries, and took place “over the past few months”, said MOH.

The ministry provides the list of locations that infectious Covid-19 patients visited for at least 30 minutes and the times they visited them to get people who were at those places to monitor their health closely for two weeks from when they were there.

The full list of locations and times can be found on MOH’s website.

The ministry 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 necessary.

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

The number of unlinked cases in the community in a week has stayed stable at a daily average of one case over the same period.

With 93 cases discharged on Saturday, 56,252 patients have fully recovered from the disease.

A total of 50 patients remained in hospital as of Saturday, with none in intensive care, while 638 were recuperating in community facilities.

Singapore has had 27 deaths from Covid-19 complications, while 15 who tested positive have died of other causes.

Globally, the virus outbreak, which began in December last year, has infected more than 26.8 million people. More than 879,000 people have died.

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