30 COVID-19 Cases Today (31 Dec); 5 Are Community Cases

Today is finally the last day of 2020, the year that no one loves. And we didn’t end well because it’s been a while since we see so many community cases.

Based on yesterday’s figures, the number of new cases in the community has remained low, with a total of 2 cases in the past week who are currently unlinked.

That number has just spiked with today’s report.

As of 12pm today (31 December 2020), the Ministry of Health (MOH) has preliminarily confirmed 30 new cases of COVID-19 infection.

25 of them are imported cases while 5 of them are community cases.

Of these, 2 are family members of Case 58810, a Marine Surveyor who was in yesterday’s COVID-19 report.

3 are a family cluster involving a harbour pilot (Case 58817) who was detected from Rostered Routine Testing (RRT).

MOH is now aggressively tracing and testing the close contacts of the community cases so as to ringfence these cases and prevent further transmission.

In addition, they will commence a special testing operation to test individuals who had boarded the ships that Cases 58810 and 58817 had recently worked on. They will also test harbour pilots, marine surveyors and ship repair workers in the coming days, regardless of their RRT schedule, to determine their COVID-19 status.

Today’s report brings the total number of cases in Singapore to 58,599.

SIA Pilot Who Has COVID-19 Could Have New UK Coronavirus Strain

Yesterday, 27 new Covid-19 cases were reported.

26 of them are import cases, including one Singapore Airline pilot and a work pass holder.

Both of them preliminarily tested positive for B117, UK’s variant of the coronavirus.

The SIA pilot, a 40-year-old man, was in the UK for business between 19 Dec and 22 Dec 2020, the Ministry of Health (MOH) reported.

On 23 Dec 2020, he was tested as part of CAAS’s pro-active surveillance for aircrew returning on overseas flights.

While initially tested negative, the man subsequently developed a fever on 26 Dec 2020.

He went to a general practitioner clinic on 27 Dec and tested positive for the coronavirus, and was sent to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID).

Serological tests for him returned negative, indicating a likely current infection.

MOH says they’ll conduct further tests to determine the type of Covid-19 virus he has.

The other Covid-19 case which might have been infected with the UK variant is a 53-year-old man who had returned from the UK.

While he had completed his Stay-Home-Notice (SHN) on 21 Dec 2020, he felt body aches on 22 Dec 2020 and developed Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI) symptoms on Christmas Day, 25 Dec 2020.

The man then tested positive on 29 Dec 2020.

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