2 More Covid-19 Cases Test “Preliminary Positive” For Omicron Variant
Earlier this week, the Ministry of Health (MOH) confirmed 2 imported cases of the Omicron Covid-19 variant.
2 Covid-19 Cases Confirmed With Omicron Variant, They Arrived In S’pore On 1 Dec
On Thursday (9 Dec), MOH reported that 2 more individuals have tested “preliminary positive” for the new infectious strain.
While one of these new cases is imported, the other is local and involves a Changi Airport transit staff.
If confirmed, the airport staff will be Singapore’s first local case of the omicron variant.
Local Omicron case worked as staff in Changi Airport terminals
According to MOH’s report published on Thursday (9 Dec) night, 2 more patients in Singapore have tested “preliminary positive” for the Omicron variant.
The younger of the 2, identified as Case 276363, is a 24-year-old Singaporean woman who works as a passenger service staff member at Changi Airport Terminals 1 and 3.
She had also worked in the transit holding area, where she may have come in contact with passengers from an “Omicron-affected” country, shared MOH.
That said, the woman had not worked in Terminal 4, a location visited by 3 patients who tested positive for the Omicron variant earlier.
She is currently receiving medical care at NCID. Tests are currently being run to confirm the variant that she’s infected with.
If confirmed, she would be Singapore’s first local Omicron variant case.
Other Omicron case returned via VTL from Germany
The other case, known as Case 276223, is a 46-year-old permanent resident and was onboard Singapore Airlines flight SQ325.
She had returned to Singapore on 6 Dec via a vaccinated travel lane (VTL) from Germany.
Both her pre-departure and arrival tests came back negative. However, she tested Covid positive on 8 Dec after developing a runny nose.
The NCID confirmed that she had the S-gene Target Failure on 9 Dec.
Both omicron cases recovering in NCID
Both cases are currently recovering in isolation wards at NCID.
MOH is also conducting aggressive contact tracing to ringfence the cases.
As it stands, MOH will place close contacts of the cases on a 10-day quarantine at designated facilities. They would also have to undergo PCR tests at the start and end of their quarantine.
Meanwhile, other airport staff will have to perform daily ARTs for the next 7 days, in addition to their weekly PCR tests.
Test regularly for the Omicron variant
Even though the authorities try their hardest to contain the spread of the Omicron variant, there will inevitably be more cases in the coming weeks.
As a community, we can help by regularly testing ourselves and practising good social responsibility.
We hope the ongoing ringfencing efforts will help prevent large-scale spreads in the community.
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Featured image adapted by MS News.
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