Residents of eight Housing Board blocks in Bukit Merah View will be required to go for Covid-19 swab tests after 21 cases were detected in one block.
The 21 cases were from nine different households at Block 119 in the estate. Wastewater testing at nearby blocks also detected Covid-19 viral fragments.
Mandatory polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests will be conducted for all residents living in blocks 116, 117, 118, 119, 124A, 124B, 125 and 126 Bukit Merah View today and tomorrow, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said yesterday.
These blocks are near 115 Bukit Merah View Market and Food Centre, the site of Singapore's largest open cluster to date with 70 cases, after adding five more cases yesterday.
Voluntary testing will be conducted concurrently for visitors to the blocks, and those who interacted with residents there, between June 5 and yesterday.
In all, MOH reported 14 new cases of infections in the community yesterday, with 10 linked to previous cases and four unlinked. Together with seven imported cases, yesterday's tally was 21.
Of the five new cases in the Bukit Merah cluster, which has exceeded the Jem and Westgate cluster with 63 cases, two were diagnosed during quarantine.
A Nanyang Polytechnic technical executive, 42, who is fully vaccinated, had a cough on June 12, a sore throat the next day, and saw a doctor at a polyclinic last Monday.
She tested negative for Covid-19, but as she was a close contact of a previous case, she was placed on quarantine last Wednesday. Her second Covid-19 test on Thursday came back positive.
The second was a 45-year-old operations staff member of packaging company Paxxus. The permanent resident is also a close contact of a previous case and was placed on quarantine last Monday. She also tested negative once before testing positive for Covid-19.
The other three cases linked to the Bukit Merah View cluster were detected through community surveillance testing for people who have visited the 115 Bukit Merah View Market and Food Centre and other locations related to the cluster.
They are an 81-year-old retiree, a 41-year-old Indonesian domestic worker and a 35-year-old Singaporean working at engineering consultancy J. Roger Preston.
Meanwhile, two new Covid-19 clusters have formed, linked to two Indonesian domestic workers.
One of them is 47 years old, and was confirmed to have Covid-19 last Wednesday. Three new cases - a 66-year-old Singaporean man who is a retiree, an 89-year-old woman who is a retiree, and a 64-year-old woman who works at Hong Leong Finance at 16 Raffles Quay - have been linked to her.
The other Indonesian domestic worker, 32, was found to have Covid-19 last Wednesday. An Indonesian domestic worker, 30, who is a close contact, was placed on quarantine last Wednesday and found to have Covid-19 on Friday. She did not have any symptoms.
Of the four unlinked cases, one is a Vietnamese national, 31, who works as a pastry maker at Bakery Point at Redhill MRT station. She did not have any symptoms and was detected during surveillance testing for those who have been to Block 86 Redhill Close.
In all, Singapore has recorded a total of 62,403 cases.
