Singapore confirmed 305 new COVID-19 cases as of noon on Monday (May 18), including a woman who had gone to work at Bishan MRT station.
She was one of the two Singaporean cases reported on Monday.
The 58-year-old woman is an unlinked case, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in its daily update. She had gone to work at the MRT station after the onset of symptoms on May 14, and tested positive for the coronavirus on May 17.
The other Singaporean patient, a 50-year-old man, went to work at 1020 Tai Seng Avenue. He is linked to the cluster there, which now has 125 confirmed cases.
Singapore now has a total of 28,343 COVID-19 cases.
Of the 305 new cases reported on Monday, 303 patients are work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories.
“The lower number of cases today is partly due to fewer tests being processed as one testing laboratory is reviewing its processes following an earlier apparatus calibration issue, and will need time to ramp up its testing capacity,” said MOH.
The majority of the new cases, or 99 per cent of them, are linked to known clusters. The rest are pending contact tracing. MOH added that in the past week, it has uncovered links for 13 previously unlinked cases.
A total of 495 more patients have been discharged. In all, 9,835 have fully recovered from the infection and have been discharged from hospitals or community care facilities, said the ministry.
There are currently 1,036 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and 12 are in critical condition in the intensive care unit. A total of 17,450 are isolated and cared for at community facilities.
Four new clusters have also been identified. They are at 2 Kampong Ampat, 43 Tuas View Close, 117 Tuas View Walk 1 and Woodlands Industrial Park E1.
Meanwhile, a cluster at ABC Hostel located at 3 Jalan Kubor has been closed after no new cases were linked to it for the past two incubation periods.
With two weeks left before “circuit breaker” measures are expected to be lifted, the number of new cases in the community has decreased to an average of three per day in the last week, from seven per day in the week before.
The number of unlinked cases in the community has remained at an average of two per day in the past two weeks.
Over the weekend, Singapore recorded its 22nd death linked to the virus – a 67-year-old Singaporean man with pre-existing conditions.
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