68-year-old S'porean man dies of Covid-19 complications, 29th such death in S'pore

The man returned from work in Indonesia on Nov 17, and had a history of hypertension and heart disease. PHOTO: ST FILE

SINGAPORE - A 68-year-old man, who had a history of hypertension and heart disease, has died from complications due to Covid-19, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Saturday (Nov 28). He is the 29th patient to die from the virus here.

The Singaporean had travelled to Indonesia on March 10 for work, and returned to Singapore on Nov 17. He was admitted to a hospital upon arrival.

He was confirmed to have Covid-19 infection on Nov 18, and had a past history of hypertension and heart disease.

The National University Hospital has reached out to his family and is extending assistance to them.

Six new coronavirus cases were announced by MOH on Saturday, including a locally transmitted community case.

The local case - a woman - was detected from its surveillance testing of stallholders in and near Tekka Centre on Thursday.

She is a Singaporean who is a stallholder selling mutton at Tekka Market and is asymptomatic.

The woman works with a co-worker at her stall at Tekka Market, and stays at Yishun Street 22 with her husband, who has been working at Mustafa Centre for the past few years. She regularly visits her children who stay at Bishan Street 13 and Tampines Street 86.

MOH said that all her identified close contacts, including her family members and co-worker, have been isolated and placed on quarantine. They will be tested at the start and end of their quarantine period so that any asymptomatic cases can be detected.

The ministry will also conduct serological tests on her household and family contacts to determine if she could have been infected by them.

Besides Tekka Centre and Mustafa Centre, the Courts Megastore in Tampines, Northpoint City in Yishun and Hoe Kee Superstore at New World Centre were added to the list of places visited by Covid-19 patients when they were infectious.

MOH provides the list of locations that infectious Covid-19 patients visited for at least 30 minutes and the times they visited them to get people who were at those places at the same time to monitor their health closely for two weeks from the date of their visit.

The full list of locations and times can be found on the gov.sg website.

The ministry said that close contacts would already have been notified and that there is no need to avoid these places as they would have been cleaned if necessary

The remaining five new cases announced on Saturday are all imported and were placed on stay-home notice on arrival in Singapore.

Of the five, four are currently employed in Singapore. Of these, two are work pass holders who arrived from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, while two are work permit holders who arrived from Malaysia and Indonesia. The remaining case is a dependant's pass holder who arrived from Saudi Arabia.

There were no new cases from workers' dormitories, said MOH.

Singapore had gone 16 days without a locally transmitted case until Thursday, when a 32-year-old Singaporean marine service engineer, who had dinner with 12 family members at Seoul Garden in Tampines Mall, was announced to have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Saturday's new cases take Singapore's total to 58,205.

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