Throughout the past month, Singaporeans have heard about the demise of Covid-19 patients more regularly than usual.
On Monday (23 Aug) evening, MOH reported that an 86-year-old unvaccinated woman had succumbed to Covid-19.
The elderly lady is Singapore’s 50th Covid-19 fatality and the 13th in the past month.
In its evening update on Monday (23 Aug), MOH said the Covid-19 patient, who was unvaccinated, passed away about 3 weeks after testing positive.
On 23 Jul, the woman was admitted to Changi General Hospital for an unrelated medical condition and tested negative for the coronavirus.
A subsequent test performed on 29 Jul also returned negative results.
However, she was later identified as a close contact of a positive case and had to undergo another test on 2 Aug.
Her 3rd test turned out to be a bringer of bad news, as her test results returned positive.
Unfortunately, the elderly succumbed to the infection about 3 weeks later, on Monday (23 Aug). She also had underlying medical conditions such as cancer and high blood pressure.
Hours before the update, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung penned a Facebook post addressing the recent rise in Covid-19 deaths.
According to Minister Ong, many of these Covid-related deaths were due to infections that happened earlier in the month.
Using a graph that assigns death and ICU admissions based on the dates patients tested positive, we can trace most of these events to infections in late July and early August.
During this period, Singapore had relatively higher Covid-19 numbers and a lower vaccination rate.
Though there weren’t any new clusters on Monday (23 Aug), an existing one has grown rapidly.
Previously known as the Case 68799 cluster, the North Coast Lodge cluster reported 59 new cases on Monday (23 Aug) alone.
While the cluster only had 3 cases the day before, it now has 62 infections linked to it.
According to MOH, the new cases were detected through testing operations after 3 dormitory residents tested positive on 21 Aug.
The authorities have tested about 2,200 workers thus far and are still administering tests for the remaining 3,200 residents.
Thankfully, those who tested positive are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms.
As a precaution, all residents at the dormitory have been placed on Movement Restriction Order.
The emergence of such a large cluster is certainly concerning. We hope the safeguards in place will prevent a reoccurrence of huge clusters in our workers’ dormitories seen last year.
However, the silver lining among all these is that most of our other clusters appear to be under control.
On a separate note, MS News extends our heartfelt condolences to the family of the 86-year-old Covid-19 victim. May she rest in peace.
Have news you must share? Get in touch with us via email at news@mustsharenews.com.
Featured image adapted from Changi General Hospital on Facebook.
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