66 S’pore Healthcare Workers Test Positive For Covid-19, Almost All Infected Outside Of Hospital

66 Healthcare Workers With Covid-19 Didn’t Get Infections From Patients In Hospital

Essential workers, especially those in healthcare, are arguably at most risk of contracting Covid-19. However, investigations show that they’re actually safer at their workplace than outside.

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Health Minister Gan Kim Yong revealed in Parliament on Monday (4 May) that there are 66 healthcare workers, as well as support staff, who tested positive for Covid-19.

Although 46 of them had direct contact with Covid-19 patients, none of them appears to have caught it from them.

Mr Gan was responding to MP Dr Chia Shi-Lu regarding how many frontliners in hospitals have contracted Covid-19, as well as the number who caught it from patients.

No evidence that healthcare workers got Covid-19 from patients

Mr Gan revealed that investigations into how the frontliners got Covid-19 showed no direct link to patients.

Instead, they acquired them through the following means:

• Contracting Covid-19 in another country (imported cases)
• Household transmission (from family members/spouses)
• Church clusters

There’s one case in an unnamed private healthcare institution where there may have been a link between a doctor and Covid-19 patient.

However, 1 case out of 66 is good, as it means a slim to no chance of transmission within hospitals.

Healthcare workers “have taken an extra level of care”

Mr Gan also mentions that they’ve taken “an extra level of care” where they work.

If you’ve seen or watched any feature on healthcare workers during Covid-19, you’d know that they take personal protective equipment (PPE) extremely seriously.

Before they can start working, they have to be in full gear. This level of care is never compromised on.

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Even though the process is tedious, the risks outweigh the inconvenience. We think healthcare workers will take the inconvenience of putting on full PPE gear over testing positive for Covid-19 any day.

Efforts to protect frontliners successful so far

This should come as a relief for healthcare workers, who may understandably be fearful of contracting the virus through their line of work.

Despite their fear, they continue to soldier on day in, day out while we do our part to stay at home so that the spread can slow.

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They’re our first line of defence. For this, we are very grateful to hear that almost none of them contracted the virus while working.

Singaporeans too, perhaps shouldn’t avoid our warriors after work. As you can see, hospitals take sterilisation super seriously.

Featured image adapted from Facebook and Facebook.