All long-term pass holders and short-term visitors with recent travel history to the UK within the last 14 days will not be allowed to enter or transit through Singapore. THE STRAITS TIMES
Singapore has detected one case of a new coronavirus strain reported in the UK to be potentially more contagious, the Ministry of Health said on December 23.
The patient is a 17-year-old Singaporean girl who had studied in the UK.
The ministry said that with the B117 strain circulating in the UK, the National Public Health Laboratory is performing viral genomic sequencing for confirmed Covid-19 cases who arrived from Europe recently.
A total of 31 imported cases from Europe, who arrived in Singapore between November 17 and December 17, were confirmed to have Covid-19 infection this month.
Among them, 12 were not infected with the B117 strain, and one patient, identified as Case 58,504, has been found to be carrying the strain.
Five samples cannot be sequenced due to their low viral load, said the ministry, which added it is pending confirmation of the results for another 11 cases who are preliminarily positive for the B117 strain.
The last two cases have not been tested yet.
The ministry said there is currently no evidence that the B117 strain is circulating in the community.
It said: “All the cases had been placed on 14-day stay-home notices at dedicated facilities or isolated upon arrival in Singapore, and their close contacts had been quarantined earlier.”
The 17 year-old Singaporean girl who was infected with the B117 strain had been studying in the UK since August this year.
She returned to Singapore on December 6 and served a stay-home notice at a dedicated facility upon arrival.
She developed a fever the next day, and was confirmed to have Covid-19 infection on December 8, said the ministry.
Her case was included in the ministry’s case count on the same day.
All her close contacts had been quarantined and tested negative at the end of their quarantine period, the ministry added.
It said: “As she had been isolated upon arrival in Singapore, we were able to ringfence this case so that there was no further transmission arising from her.”
As a precautionary measure to reduce the risk of B117 strain’s spread to Singapore, the multi-ministry task force combating Covid-19 announced on December 22 that from 11:59pm on December 23, all long-term pass holders and short-term visitors with recent travel history to the UK within the last 14 days will not be allowed to enter or transit through Singapore.
THE STRAITS TIMES (SINGAPORE)/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
