News

Bukit Merah View Market & Food Centre Cluster Closed; COVID-19 Community Cases Over 1K in 7 Days

2021-07-26 , 9:42 am

In an ideal world, the coronavirus would have evolved the ability to empathise, so when it sees us staying at home and dealing with so many restrictions, it’d stop invading people’s bodies.

But, of course, it’s doing the opposite.

Even though our daily case count has been going down in recent days, two new clusters were identified yesterday, and there were 38 unlinked infections.

Here at the deets:

Bukit Merah View Market & Food Centre Cluster Closed

The two new clusters are linked to Cases 65893 and 65846, each of which has three infections.

It wasn’t all bad news, though. Three old clusters were closed as there have been no new infections linked to them for the past 28 days, or two incubation periods.

The three clusters are linked to the:

115 Bukit Merah View Market and Food Centre cluster
119 Bukit Merah View cluster
Case 64394 cluster

Yes, after weeks of being our biggest active cluster with 94 infections, the Bukit Merah Market cluster has finally been closed.

Reader: Yes! It’s finally safe to have a meal there.

Uh, dining out is not allowed at the moment.

Reader: Of course it is

Investigations by the Ministry of Health (MOH) revealed that the virus could have spread at the market through long queues and surfaces in toilets.

COVID-19 Community Cases Over 1,000 in 7 Days

Yesterday, 117 new community cases were reported, of whom 38 were unlinked.

Unsurprisingly, the overall number of infections in the community has skyrocketed from 324 in the week before to 1,056 in the past week.

That’s an average of 150 new community cases every day.

Similarly, the number of unlinked community cases has also shot up from 24 cases in the week before to 136 cases in the past week.

The case numbers may be going down, but don’t expect them to magically dwindle anytime soon: MOH said that we’re likely to continue seeing high numbers in the coming days.

KTV & Fishery Cluster Continue to Grow

Just like our lust for travel nowadays, the clusters linked to KTV lounges cluster and the Jurong Fishery Port continues to grow.

46 new infections were linked to the seaport cluster, bringing its total case count to 792.

Meanwhile, five new cases were added to the KTV cluster, meaning it now has 237 infections.

Five new cases were also linked to the new Samy’s Curry Restaurant cluster, which currently has 13 cases.

In total, we have 25 active clusters.

Distribution Exercise for Free ART Test Kits

Those who have visited selected markets and food centres in the last 14 days will be able to collect free antigen rapid test (ART) self-test kits over the next two days.

Residents can head to Residents’ Committee Centres near the Geylang Bahru Market and Food Centre and 146 Teck Whye Avenue Market to collect their free test kit.

The kits will be available for collection today (26 July) and tomorrow.

If you test positive on an ART test or get an invalid result twice, you will need to follow up with a confirmatory PCR test at a Swab and Send Home (SASH) clinic.

524 Cases in Hospitals

At the moment, there are 524 COVID-19 cases in hospitals, most of whom are well and under observation.

12 serious cases require oxygen supplementation, while two are in critical condition in the intensive care unit (ICU). None of these 14 cases is fully vaccinated.

Seven of them, patients above the age of 60 who are either unvaccinated or received one dose, have fallen very ill, MOH said.

The ministry reiterated that the evidence continues to show that vaccination prevents serious disease for COVID-19 cases.

Learn more about vaccination here: