657 COVID-19 Cases Today (3 May); Local Cases Back to Double Digit

Today is 3 May 2020, which means we just need to tahan for one more day of Circuit Breaker and we’d no longer need to have makan Maggi Mee every day!

Well, that is if you’ve been hibernating for the last 27 days and didn’t know that the Circuit Breaker has been extended to 1 June 2020.

But if you’ve indeed been hibernating for weeks, you’d be glad to know that the number of cases, at least in the local community transmission, has been dropping, though today’s number isn’t that encouraging.

Today, there are 657 cases.

This means Singapore now has 18,205 cases.

Of this, 10 are Singaporeans or Singapore PRs. The majority of the cases are migrant workers from dormitories.

Based on yesterday’s numbers, the number of new cases in the community has decreased, from an average of 23 cases per day in the week before, to an average of 12 per day in the past week. The number of unlinked cases in the community has also decreased, from an average of 14 cases per day in the week before, to an average of 6 per day in the past week.

So far, there have been 17 deaths caused by COVID-19 infections, with the latest victim being a 76-year-old Singaporean who passed away on 1 May 2020.

Pertaining to fatality rate, New York released some numbers yesterday that might shed light on why the fatality rate in Singapore is so much lower than the global figure.

New York Mass Antibody Test Shows A Gross Undercount of Cases

A month ago, testing was mainly done to detect whether a person has the coronavirus in his or her body. That is called PCR testing. You can watch this video that explains how it’s done:

In recent weeks, antibody testing became mainstream though it can’t replace the usual PCR testing due to two reasons:

• Results aren’t 100% accurate
• If a person has been infected, it might take a while (11 to 14 days) before he or she could be shown positive for COVID-19

The goal of antibody testing is to check whether a person’s blood has the antibody that binds to the coronavirus, as usually, when a person is infected, the antibody will be “created” and stays in the body even after recovery.

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New York’s mass testing, which was different from the one they did two weeks ago, showed that over 13% of the population could have been infected before—a far cry from the official 2%.

Since deaths are definitely registered, this means the fatality rate in the epicentre could be 1.18% instead of the rate of 7.6% (in New York).

You can read more about the findings here.

Facts about the virus change so rapidly, you might want to get the latest updates by bookmarking MOH’s website here and registering for the Gov.sg’s WhatsApp service here.

Or if you’re young, you can join Gov.sg’s Telegram channel and do remember to join the Goody Feed Telegram channel, too.

Also, do subscribe to our YouTube channel whereby we’d update you daily on what’s happening in Singapore – including, of course, about the nasty bug that’s been disrupting all our lives: