SINGAPORE – The Ministry of Health (MOH) announced 486 new Covid-19 cases in Singapore on Monday (May 11), taking the total count to 23,822.

Two Singaporeans and permanent residents are among the new patients.

MOH said the lower number of cases on Monday is partly due to fewer tests being processed at a testing laboratory that is “recalibrating its apparatus for one of the test kits”.

Migrant workers living in dormitories continue to form the bulk of the remaining cases.

The ministry said more details will be released later on Monday.

On Sunday, MOH announced that 33 Covid-19 cases from a laboratory were false positives due to an apparatus calibration issue for one of its test kits.

Subsequent retesting at the National Public Health Laboratory confirmed that the cases, and two more that had equivocal results, were actually negative.

The ministry said no false negative results were discovered and immediate action has been taken to rectify the situation. The lab has also stopped all tests and is working to solve the calibration issue.

MOH also reported 876 new cases on Sunday, including an imported case. He is a 61-year-old Singaporean man with a travel history to Qatar who was placed on stay-home notice upon arriving in Singapore.

This was the first imported case in over two weeks since two imported cases were confirmed on April 26.

Work permit holders residing in dormitories made up 860 of the new cases announced on Sunday. There were 11 cases for work permit holders outside dormitories.

A total of 20,961 workers from dormitories have been diagnosed with Covid-19 so far, accounting for about 6.5 per cent of 323,000 dorm residents.

Local cases, excluding dormitory residents and other work permit holders, fell to an average of nine daily the past week, from 11 two weeks ago.

The number of such cases that were unlinked has also dipped to an average of four a day from five over the same period.

As of Sunday, 2,715 patients in Singapore have fully recovered from the virus and been discharged.

So far, 20 people have died from Covid-19 complications here and six others who tested positive have died from other causes.

Globally, the outbreak, which began in December last year, has caused more than 4.17 million people to be infected. Some 284,000 have died.

The United States is the worst affected country in the world, with more than 1.36 million cases and 80,000 deaths from Covid-19 as of Monday.

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