To prevent the spread of Covid-19 into the community, most travellers to Singapore must serve a strict 14-day Stay-Home Notice (SHN) regime.
However, when symptoms occur on the very last day of SHN, leaks can occur especially if people don’t inform the authorities of symptoms.
Take this Singaporean man who failed to report that he had a cough on his last night of SHN, and instead went home the next day.
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He finally tested positive the day after, when he saw a doctor – but could already have put his family at risk.
In a media release on Saturday (27 Mar) night, the Ministry of Health (MOH) elaborated on the 23 new cases reported earlier.
All of them are imported except for 1 community case, which we will get to later.
MOH made special mention of the 1 of the imported cases, a 49-year-old male Singaporean.
The Singaporean returned from the central Asian country of Kazakhstan on 11 Mar.
As expected, he served his SHN at a dedicated facility till 25 Mar.
He also took 2 Covid-19 tests: on 11 Mar and on 24 Mar, the day before his SHN ended.
Both came back negative.
However, the man developed a cough on the night of 24 Mar – the last night of his SHN and the same day that he took his 2nd negative test.
He didn’t report the cough to the authorities, despite it being one of the symptoms of Covid-19.
Since he didn’t mention any symptoms, he was free to return home on 25 Mar.
After spending 1 night at home, he developed more symptoms on 26 Mar.
This time, he went to a General Practitioner clinic to seek treatment for a fever and headache.
He was tested for Covid-19, and it came back positive.
Thus, he was sent to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID).
He was also deemed as Case 61226, one of the imported cases reported on Saturday (27 Mar).
He was counted as an imported case due to his recent travel history.
However, by going home, he could have potentially infected his family members.
That’s why his close contacts have been identified and placed on quarantine.
Now, if he had just told the authorities about his cough on 24 Mar, they wouldn’t have been exposed to the virus and quarantined.
As for the community case, they can be like buses sometimes. None of them come for a long time, but when they come, they come together.
After almost 2 weeks of zero community cases, Singapore reported 1 on Friday (26 Mar), a domestic helper from Myanmar.
On Saturday (27 Mar), we reported another community case for the 2nd day in a row.
And she isn’t even linked to the previous one.
The latest community case is a 48-year-old female Singaporean permanent resident (PR).
She works as a part-time food packer.
Her workplace is Sheera Pte Ltd. It’s located at 5 Kaki Bukit Road 1, which is the address of Eunos Technolink.
She doesn’t need to interact with customers as part of her job.
The woman travelled to India in Mar 2020, and spent 10 months there, MOH said.
She only returned to Singapore on 11 Dec.
When she returned, she served her SHN at a dedicated facility until 25 Dec.
She took a Covid-19 test on 21 Dec, and it came back negative.
After spending some months back in Singapore, she was supposed to return to India again.
Hence, she took another Covid-19 test on Thursday (25 Mar), as part of the procedure for her flight back to India.
However, it came back positive on 26 Mar, and she was sent to the NCID.
She’s been deemed as Case 61205.
As she already spent more than 3 months back in Singapore, she has been classified as a community case.
Like the case of the domestic helper, there’s another twist.
A 2nd test was administered to her by the National Public Health Laboratory on 26 Mar.
It came back negative for Covid-19 infection, MOH said.
However, a serological test come back positive – that means it’s likely a past infection.
MOH said she could be shedding “minute fragments” of the virus’ RNA.
But since there’s no definitive conclusion as to when she was infected, the authorities will take all the precautions necessary.
That means all the woman’s close contacts will be isolated and placed on quarantine.
After the new community case was revealed, MOH also added 2 new locations to the list of places visited by cases while infectious.
Both of them are in Little India. They are:
The recent cases of people from overseas serving SHN but still testing positive for Covid-19 after their release are troubling.
For the male Singaporean, he may have been eager to see his family, but he should’ve reported his cough nonetheless. Not doing so could have exposed them to the virus.
Thus, whether or not you’ve gone overseas, do report any symptoms you have promptly.
It may make the difference between keeping your loved ones safe and infecting them.
Have news you must share? Get in touch with us via email at hello@mustsharenews.com.
Featured image adapted from Brittany Colette @ Unsplash. For illustration purposes only.
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