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SINGAPORE: Singapore reported 813 new COVID-19 cases as of noon on Thursday (Jan 6), including 390 imported infections.
There was one fatality, taking the country’s death toll from coronavirus complications to 835, according to the latest infection statistics on the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) website.
Thursday’s case count was up from the 805 reported on Wednesday.
Among the new cases reported on Thursday, 423 were locally transmitted, comprising 404 in the community and 19 in migrant worker’s dormitories.
A total of 365 new Omicron infections were confirmed on Thursday, comprising 234 imported cases and 131 local cases.
The daily COVID-19 cases and new confirmed Omicron cases are presented as two separate sets of data on MOH’s website.
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EXPECT RAPID DOUBLING OF CASES
As of Saturday, Singapore has detected 546 confirmed Omicron cases comprising 443 imported cases and 103 local cases, said MOH.
In the last week, there were 13 unlinked community Omicron cases and 78 Omicron cases from local linked community transmission.
According to MOH, the Omicron variant has been detected in more than 110 countries, mainly in Africa and Europe.
“Current observations from affected countries/regions suggest that the Omicron variant is more transmissible than currently circulating variants. Globally, the Omicron variant has overtaken the Delta variant as the predominant variant in numerous countries, such as the United Kingdom and Denmark,” it said.
Available data thus far suggests that Omicron infections face reduced risks of hospitalisation and severe disease compared to Delta infections, said the ministry.
“Locally, our Omicron cases have so far not been severe as well – none has required intensive care or oxygen supplementation, although this may be partially due to most cases being fully vaccinated and from younger age groups,” it added.
Preliminary estimates from overseas studies also indicate that two doses of mRNA vaccines reduce the risk of symptomatic infection from Omicron by about 35 per cent. The risk is further reduced to about 75 per cent lower for individuals with a primary and booster mRNA regimen.
“There should be better protection against severe infection and death due to cellular immunity and other factors,” said MOH.
“It is therefore important for us to press on with our booster vaccination programme to enhance protection against infection and severe disease.”
The ministry said it expects a new wave of local cases “soon” given the higher transmissibility of the Omicron variant.
“However, the peak of the wave can be blunted and we can avoid overwhelming our healthcare system again if everyone plays their part to get their vaccinations and booster doses, self-test regularly and self-isolate if tested positive,” said MOH.
In particular, those who have recently arrived from overseas or been in contact with an infected person should reduce their social interactions.
“In the coming days and weeks, we should expect more community cases, and rapid doubling of cases. This is again a process we need to go through, in order to live with COVID-19.
“We have done whatever we can to prepare ourselves for it; especially in administering boosters to our population and starting vaccinations for our children. We seek the cooperation and understanding of everyone, as we weather through an Omicron wave in the next one to two months,” added the Health Ministry.
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Linette Lai Political Correspondent
SINGAPORE – More Omicron cases have been picked up in Singapore as the Covid-19 variant spreads across many countries and regions, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Wednesday (Dec 22) in announcing a freeze on vaccinated-travel lane (VTL) ticket sales.
It noted that thus far, enhanced testing regime for travellers has helped the authorities to detect 65 confirmed Omicron cases.
“With aggressive contact tracing and ringfencing measures, we have, for now, been able to limit onward community transmission. But it is a matter of time before the Omicron variant spreads in our community,” MOH added.
Singapore has detected six cases in the community.
Meanwhile, a new study from Britain showed Omicron infections are no less severe with the odds of an individual being reinfected with the variant after having already been infected once are 5.4 times higher than with Delta.
Researchers at Imperial College London found no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta when they compared 11,329 people with confirmed or likely Omicron infections with nearly 200,000 people infected with other variants.
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weehingthong 