If you head to the kitchen and find that your large tin of chocolate cream biscuits is empty even though you hadn’t touched it yet, you’d be desperate for answers.
You then see your little nephew running in with chocolate all over his mouth, and deduced that he must have eaten all of them.
Similarly, with the dramatic spike in imported Covid-19 cases lately, most of us would assume that the rise was due to the influx of more travellers into the country.
But this isn’t the case, according to our Education Minister.
The Reason for Rise in Imported COVID-19 Cases Isn’t Due to More Travellers Arriving in S’pore
Despite what the numbers imply, the government hasn’t increased the number of travellers coming into Singapore, Mr Lawrence Wong said.
Instead, a much higher infection rate of the virus across the globe is to blame.
“We have not increased (the number of) travellers coming into Singapore,” Mr Wong said on Monday (25 Jan).
“Why have the numbers gone up? It’s simply because the prevalence rate, the incidence rate, of the disease is much higher now. The virus is raging in countries everywhere.”
Speaking at the Institute of Policy Studies, Mr Wong said that the biggest sources of travellers remains construction and foreign domestic workers.
And the number of these workers entering the country has not risen “in recent times”.
Moreover, all travellers are now required to take a pre-departure test 72 hours before they arrive.
But since the tests are not always foolproof – some people may initially test negative while the body is incubating the virus – other measures have to be implemented.
This is why some travellers have to serve 14-day or 21-day stay-home notices, to separate potential infections from the community.
Even though remaining somewhat open to the world is necessary for Singapore’s economy and society to function, the authorities will continue to take the necessary precautions to ensure that imported infections are isolated.
48 Covid-19 Cases Reported On Sunday; Highest Since March 2020
On Sunday (24 Jan), the county reported 48 new cases of the coronavirus, all of which were imported.
This equals Singapore’s record for the highest number of daily imported cases, set on 23 March last year.
And the following day, 44 new infections were recorded, all imported as well.
Despite this, the number of new community cases has gone up from 10 in the week before to 13 in the past week.
The good thing is that the number of unlinked cases has gone down slightly from four in the week before to three in the past week.
Image: Rajaraman Arumugam / Shutterstock.com (Image is for illustration purpose only)
Would you be jailed for being half-naked in public? Well, the answer will shock you. Seriously. Watch this to the end and you'll understand:
