Rise in coronavirus cases among work permit holders outside dorms
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Homestay Lodge is one of the new clusters.
PHOTO: BT FILE
Calvin Yang
The number of new coronavirus cases among work permit holders staying outside dormitories has risen to an average of 21 per day in the past week, from 11 the week before.
A total of 27 work permit holders who stay outside dorms were confirmed to have the Covid-19 infection yesterday, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in its latest daily update on infection numbers.
A 40-year-old Malaysian work permit holder, who was confirmed to have the coronavirus on Friday, died yesterday.
Known as Case 4,754, his death was caused by a heart attack and not due to complications from the Covid-19 infection, MOH said.
Singapore reported its sharpest single-day spike of 942 new cases yesterday, bringing the total number of infections here to 5,992.
Most of the new cases - 893 - are work permit holders staying in foreign worker dormitories.
This takes the number of workers in dorms infected with Covid-19 to 4,162, or 69 per cent of all cases. This makes up nearly 1.3 per cent of the 323,000 staying in dormitories.
MOH said most are young, have a mild illness, and are being monitored in community isolation facilities or general wards of hospitals. None is in the intensive care unit.
Meanwhile, there were 22 community cases in Singapore, comprising 14 Singaporeans and permanent residents, six with work passes, one on a dependant's pass and one on a long-term visit pass.
While the number of new cases per day in the community has gone down, the number of unlinked cases has risen slightly.
The average number of new community cases per day dropped to 31 over the past week, from 40 the week before. However, the average number of unlinked cases in the community increased slightly to 22 per day in the past week, from 19 cases the previous week.
Contact tracing and epidemiology teams are working to identify the source of infection for the unlinked cases, but this will be increasingly difficult as time passes.
Of the new cases, 21 per cent are currently unlinked.
Three more clusters were announced, including two large purpose-built dormitories: Homestay Lodge, linked to eight cases, and CDPL Tuas Dormitory, linked to five. This means over half - 24 of 43 - of purpose-built dorms now have clusters. Singapore's largest cluster, S11 Dormitory @ Punggol, added another 252 cases and now has 1,375 cases.
