Coronavirus: 23 new cases including 18 imported, 17 of which are returning residents

This article is more than 12 months old

Mar 23, 2020 06:00 am

Twenty-three new Covid-19 infections were confirmed yesterday, with 18 imported cases, and all but one of them involved returning residents and long-term pass holders.

The odd one out is a 55-year-old American woman, Case 438, who arrived from the United States for a short-term visit.

The total number of cases here is now 455, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said last night.

Yesterday's figure of 23 is slightly less than half of the 47 cases announced on Saturday, but the number of imported cases involving returning residents remains a major concern.

The 17 residents and pass holders had travelled to Europe, North and South America and Asean countries.

Twelve are Singaporeans between the ages of 21 and 57, one is a 22-year-old permanent resident, and the rest are pass holders, with ages ranging from 26 to 55, from Indonesia, India, Denmark and the UK.

The WHO is currently in the process of conducting an analysis of excess deaths during the pandemic.

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Of the five locally transmitted infections, three are linked to previous cases, with one, Case 443, a 29-year-old man, listed as part of the boulder+ Gym cluster.

Contact tracing is ongoing for the remaining two cases who are currently not linked, MOH said.

One of them is a 36-year-old Singaporean man with recent travel history to Malaysia, and the other is a male citizen, 44, with no recent travel history.

Four more patients have been discharged from hospital, making it a total of 144 cases who have fully recovered.

Of the 309 still in hospital, most are stable or improving, but 14 are in critical condition in the intensive care unit (ICU).

Two patients died from complications on Saturday morning, the first deaths in Singapore from the coronavirus.

The first death, at 7.50am, was a 75-year-old Singaporean woman with a history of chronic heart disease and hypertension. Linked to the Life Church and Missions Singapore cluster, she was in the ICU for 26 days.

The other was a 64-year-old Indonesian national who arrived in Singapore on March 13 and sought treatment at Mount Elizabeth Hospital.

The man was admitted in critical condition to the National Centre for Infectious Diseases on the same day and died at 10.15am on Saturday after nine days in intensive care.

He was earlier hospitalised for pneumonia in Indonesia and also had a history of heart disease.