16 COVID-19 Cases Today (12 May); 10 Are Community Cases

Remember the good ol’ days when we only had one community case a mere once in a while? Yeah, me neither.

As of 12pm today (12 May), the Ministry of Health (MOH) has preliminarily confirmed 16 new cases of COVID-19 infection.

Ten are community cases, of which only one is unlinked. Well, there’s some (relatively) good news!

The remaining six cases are imported.

This brings the total number of cases in Singapore to 61,419.

Overall, the number of new cases in the community has decreased from 63 cases in the week before to 40 cases in the past week. The number of unlinked cases in the community has increased from 9 cases in the week before to 12 cases in the past week.

3 Unlinked Community Cases Reported on 11 May Include a Ng Teng Fong General Hospital Staff Member

Yesterday (11 May), Singapore recorded 25 new COVID-19 cases, including 13 confirmed community cases. Of the 13 community infections, three had no known links to previous cases. They are:

• A 27-year-old Malaysian man who works as a manufacturing operator at Siltronic Singapore
• A 50-year-old Singapore permanent resident who works as an IT support staff at Kulicke & Soffa
• A 42-year-old Malaysian man who works as an operating theatre technician at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (NTFGH)

The 42-year-old man working at NTFGH returned to Singapore on 10 January after a trip to Malaysia, and served his Stay-Home Notice (SHN) until 24 January. His test, taken on 23 January during SHN, returned negative.

He developed a cough on 21 April but did not seek medical treatment. His cough worsened, so he sought medical treatment at the hospital’s staff clinic on 10 May. He was tested for COVID-19 and it came back positive on the same day.

His Ct value was very high, which is indicative of a low viral load, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said. His serology test result has also come back positive.

MOH believes the man could be shedding minute fragments of the virus RNA from a past infection which are no longer transmissible and infectious to others.

“However given that we are not able to definitively conclude when he had been infected, we will take all the necessary public health actions as a precautionary measure,” MOH said.

Seven of the ten linked community cases have been linked to the Changi Airport cluster. The remaining 3 community cases were linked to past infections as well.

Another 12 COVID-19 cases were reported as well, all from abroad. They had all been placed on stay-home notice upon their arrival here.

397 Active Cases

There are currently 144 confirmed cases who are still in hospital. Of these, most are stable or improving, and 3 are in critical condition in the intensive care unit.

253 are isolated and cared for at community facilities. These are those who have mild symptoms, or are clinically well but still test positive for COVID-19.

31 have passed away from complications due to COVID-19 infection.

Feature Image: kandl stock / Shutterstock.com (Image for illustration purpose only)