Sole Community Case Reported on 27 Mar Might Be a Past Infection

The unfortunate thing about a coronavirus infection is that it doesn’t come with a timestamp.

Since the time taken to recover from the virus varies from person to person, the authorities have no way of determining when exactly a person contracted COVID-19.

All we have at the moment is a serological test, which indicates if an infection is a fresh or past one through the detection of antibodies.

And if it’s a past infection, it’s going to be a tough task figuring out when it happened.

Sole Community Case Reported on 27 Mar Might Be a Past Infection

23 new COVID-19 cases were reported yesterday (27 March), of whom one was from the community.

However, there’s now reason to believe that the sloe community case might have been infected in the past. 

The 48-year-old woman is a permanent resident who works as a part-time food packer at Sheera at 5 Kaki Bukit Road 1.

Fortunately, she does not interact with customers in her job.

The woman, known as Case 61205, had travelled to India in March last year and returned to Singapore on 11 Dec.

Like most arrivals at that time, she was issued a stay-home notice at a dedicated facility.

Her test on 21 Dec came back negative and she was released on 25 Dec.

This year, she was supposed to travel to India in March for another trip, but when she took a pre-departure test, it came back positive and she was taken to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases.

Here’s where things got weird.

The next day, 26 March, the woman was tested again, but was negative for COVID-19 this time.

Furthermore, the results for her serological test had come back positive, meaning it was a past infection.

This means that the woman could have been infected some time back, and was only now detected.

As the Ministry of Health explained: “She could be shedding minute fragments of the virus RNA from a past infection, but given that we are not able to definitively conclude when she had been infected, we will take all the necessary public health actions as a precautionary measure”.

The remaining 22 cases were all from abroad and had been placed on stay-home notice or isolated upon arrival in Singapore.

They included a Singaporean and two permanent residents returning from India and Kazakhstan.

Increase in Community & Unlinked Cases

The bad news is that the number of new community cases has risen from none in the week before to two cases in the past week.

Similarly, the number of unlinked cases in the community has also gone up from none in the week before to two cases in the past week.

At the moment, there are 32 COVID-19 patients in hospital, including one in critical condition in the intensive care unit. Another 113 are recuperating in community facilities.

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