SINGAPORE: Singapore reported 66 new COVID-19 cases on Monday (Apr 6), bringing the national total to 1,375, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in its daily update.
One of the new cases is imported and the remaining cases are locally transmitted. Twenty-four more patients have been discharged, taking the total number of people who have fully recovered to 344.
Among the local cases, MOH has established links to existing clusters for 35 cases. Of these, 24 are linked to clusters at foreign dormitories and 11 are linked to non-dormitory clusters.
A total of 30 of the new cases are unlinked, and contact tracing is ongoing for these patients.
A total of 571 patients are still in hospital, most of whom are stable or improving, and 25 are in critical condition in the intensive care unit.
Two new clusters were also identified, according to the Ministry. They are Little Gems Preschool and Kranji Lodge.
Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said that Singapore has been conducting around 2,000 coronavirus tests daily. As of Monday, the country has conducted more than 65,000 tests.
He provided these numbers in a written answer on Monday to a parliamentary question by Nominated Member of Parliament Walter Theseira.
Assoc Prof Theseira had also asked if the Ministry of health will report any other national health statistics relating to COVID-19 to enable researchers to gather “internationally comparable datasets” on the pandemic.
“The Ministry of Health reports the relevant COVID-19 information and statistics regularly to keep Singaporeans updated. We also share information on the number of tests conducted from time to time where relevant,” said Mr Gan in his reply.
THIRD SUPPORT PACKAGE TO SUPPORT SINGAPORE
As part of the country’s ongoing battle against COVID-19, a third support package announced by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat on Monday.
The S$5.1 billion Solidarity Budget is aimed at saving jobs and protecting livelihoods during the four weeks when schools and non-essential businesses have to be shut as part of the “circuit breaker” distancing measures that will kick in from Tuesday.
READ: Solidarity Budget: Singapore spends another S$5.1b to save jobs, protect livelihoods amid impending circuit breaker rules
From Tuesday, most workplaces islandwide will be closed and schools will move to full home-based learning, as announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last week. Only essential services like food establishments, markets and supermarkets, clinics, hospitals, utilities, transport and key banking services will remain open.
Mr Heng said on Monday the COVID-19 pandemic had “exploded” in Singapore in recent days. To date, Singapore has seen six COVID-19 fatalities.
Singapore has “progressively” ramped up its measures but as the number of infections – especially local transmitted cases – kept rising in recent days, the Government decided to roll out an “extraordinary” set of “circuit breaker” measures to pre-empt the escalation, he said.
This is the first time that the Singapore Government has released three Budgets in less than two months, following the S$6.4 billion Unity Budget in February and the record-breaking S$48 billion Resilience Budget on Mar 26.
To fund this third booster, the Government has sought permission from President Halimah Yacob to draw an additional S$4 billion from past reserves, on top of the S$17 billion tapped for the Resilience Budget.
Altogether, Singapore will be committing S$59.9 billion, or about 12 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), for this battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.
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