142 New Covid-19 Cases On 8 Apr, Including 40 Linked To Worker Dormitory Clusters

Singapore Confirms 142 New Covid-19 Cases, National Tally Of 1,623 On 8 Apr

On Wednesday (8 Apr), Singapore confirmed 142 new Covid-19 cases, with just 2 of them imported cases and the rest locally contracted.

There are now a total of 1,623 confirmed cases, with 29 more cases discharged from hospital, meaning 406 have fully recovered, the Ministry of Health (MOH) announced.

Another 471 cases are in private hospitals and the Community Isolation Facility, located at D’Resort NTUC. These cases feel well but have not fully recovered from the virus.

Also, a 7th death linked to Covid-19 occurred today. We hope this number does not rise further.

55 cases linked to clusters, 40 of which are dorm-linked

Dormitories are becoming a hotbed for the Covid-19 spread.

Source

The latest numbers show that 40 new cases can be traced to foreign worker dormitories in Singapore, comprising a total of 12 clusters.

Another 28 linked cases don’t relate to dormitories.

One of these cases, Case 1466, features a 31-year-old Indian national who works as a technician at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital.

He developed symptoms on 5 Apr and he was confirmed as Covid-19 positive yesterday (7 Apr). He’s linked to the Westlite Toh Guan dormitory, which has 38 cases so far.

These are the clusters relating to foreign workers.

• S11 Dormitory @ Punggol – 20 new, 119 total
• Westlite Toh Guan dormitory (18 Toh Guan Road East) – 4 new, 38 total
• Toh Guan Dormitory (19A Toh Guan Road East) – 5 new, 23 total
• Sungei Tengah Lodge (500 Old Choa Chu Kang Road) – 11 new, 29 total
• Tampines Dormitory (2 Tampines Place) – 4 new, 21 total
• Cochrane Lodge I (51 Admiralty Road West) – 1 new, 7 total
• Cochrane Lodge II (49 Admiralty Road West) – 1 new, 6 total
• Kranji Lodge (12 Kranji Road) – 3 new, 6 total
• 55 Sungei Kadut Loop dormitory – 1 new, 5 total
• Construction site at Project Glory (50 Market Street) – 6 new, 27 total
• Mustafa Centre (145 Syed Alwi Road) – 5 new, 50 total
• Keppel Shipyard (51 Pioneer Sector 1) – 3 new, 12 total
• Wilby Residences (25 Wilby Road) – 1 new, 10 total

32-year-old man died before test results showed Covid-19 positive

A 32-year-old man from India, Case 1604, passed away today (8 Apr), after taking a swab test for Covid-19 the day before at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID).

He was told to stay at home before the test results came back, but passed away. The results tested positive.

According to Channel NewsAsia (CNA), his chest X-ray results showed that he did not have pneumonia.

MOH is still investigating his cause of death.

Take ‘Circuit Breaker’ measures seriously

Community spread is shown to be increasing here, notably in worker dormitories.

3 dormitories – S11 Dormitory, Toh Guan Dormitory, Westlite Toh Guan – have been made isolation areas.

While there were initial problems relating to the sudden isolation of nearly 20,000 workers, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) worked with dorm operators to restore cleanliness and enforce social distancing there.

Whether these measures will work to contain Covid-19 hotbeds remains to be seen.

All of us residing in Singapore need to take the ‘Circuit Breaker’ measures seriously: Not going out unless necessary and practice proper hygiene.

Otherwise, all these measures will be in vain, and we’ll only have ourselves to blame, not anyone else.

Featured image adapted from Google Maps.