SINGAPORE – Those who visited the Admiralty Wet Market and Bukit Timah Market and Food Centre in the last 14 days will be provided free Covid-19 self-test kits, said the Ministry of Health.

In its daily update on Friday night (July 23), MOH said there are 78 new cases linked to the Jurong Fishery Port cluster, which now stands at 665 cases.

The ministry is working with the People’s Association to distribute antigen rapid test (ART) self-test kits to people who visited selected markets and food centres in the last 14 days, as an added layer of ring-fencing to identify cases and prevent further transmission.

This is part of investigations into Covid-19 infection at markets and food centres that were likely seeded by fishmongers who visited Jurong Fishery Port to collect their stock to be sold at markets and food centres, added MOH.

The collection will run from Saturday to Sunday at residents’ committee centres in the vicinity of the Admiralty Wet Market and Bukit Timah Market and Food Centre.

There were also six new cases linked to the KTV cluster, which now stands at 227 cases. There were no additional KTV lounges or clubs linked to the cluster on Friday.

There were also three more cases added to the Marina Bay Sands Casino cluster, which now has 20 cases. The casino will be closed to the public from Thursday to Aug 5.

There are currently 26 active clusters of infection on Friday, ranging between three and 665 infections.

This is as three new clusters were declared, with between three and five infections each.

Six clusters linked to ION Orchard mall and five individuals were declared closed as there were no cases linked to them for the past 28 days.

Singapore reported a total of 133 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, including 130 locally transmitted cases and three imported cases. There were 29 unlinked locally transmitted cases.

Among the locally transmitted cases are two unvaccinated or partially vaccinated seniors above 70 who are at risk of serious illness.

There are 447 Covid-19 patients still in hospital. Most are well and under observation.

But two are in critical condition in the intensive care unit, and 11 patients require oxygen support. None of these 13 was fully vaccinated.

MOH said: “Eleven seniors above 60 years, who are completely unvaccinated or partially vaccinated, have fallen very ill.”

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A silver lining is that outreach efforts to get senior citizens vaccinated appear to be bearing fruit.

Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said in a Facebook post on Friday that more seniors have come forward in recent days to get vaccinated.

“Some good news today… for the past three days, the number of seniors aged 70 and above who came forward to get their first dose was about 1,000 a day, double the number before,” he said.

“If we can keep this up for several days or weeks, hopefully we can push the vaccination rate amongst seniors to above 80 per cent.

“Keep showing our seniors care, love and concern,” he said.

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has increased from 178 cases the week before to 961 cases in the past week.

The number of unlinked cases in the community in a week has increased from 18 cases to 97 over the same period.

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MOH also gave an update on vaccination in Singapore, noting that around 6.97 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered under the national vaccination programme.

Some 4.2 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, while 2.89 million people have completed the full vaccine regimen.

Over the past 28 days, 10 patients were admitted to intensive care, required oxygen supplementation or died. Among them, eight were unvaccinated, while two had received one dose of the vaccine. None was fully vaccinated.

Singapore has had 36 deaths from Covid-19 complications, while 15 who tested positive have died of other causes.

Read the full MOH press release here.

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