SINGAPORE: The number of COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) has fallen to a low since the start of Singapore’s “circuit breaker” period.
As of noon on Friday (May 22), eight patients were in critical condition in the ICU, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) in a media release.
READ: Singapore reports 614 new COVID-19 cases, including 2 pre-school staff
This is also the first time that the number of COVID-19 patients in the ICU has fallen to a single digit since the circuit breaker started on Apr 7.
According to previous data from MOH, Singapore had a high of 32 COVID-19 patients requiring intensive care on Apr 10.
The number of patients in the ICU ranged between 20 and 31 for most of April and the first two weeks of May, before trickling down to 10 cases on May 19.
In Friday’s release, MOH reported another 614 new COVID-19 cases, taking Singapore’s total number of infections to 30,426.
The majority were foreign workers residing in dormitories, and four cases were from the community, all of them Singaporeans.
A total of 838 COVID-19 patients were discharged on Friday, taking the total of recovered patients to 12,955.
MOH’s release on Friday also showed an increase in the average number of cases in the community – from five a day in the week before, to an average of seven a day in the past week.
This is in part due to the ministry’s active surveillance and screening of nursing home residents and pre-school staff, said MOH.
The testing has uncovered infections in at least five pre-school staff, as well as four nursing home residents, according to MOH’s updates on Thursday and Friday.
READ: 3 pre-school employees contract COVID-19, leave of absence issued to ‘small group’ of children, staff
READ: 2 more pre-school staff members test positive for COVID-19
Additionally, MOH on Wednesday also started including work permit holders living outside dormitories into its daily count of community cases.
Work permit holders residing outside dormitories were previously listed under a separate category in the ministry’s daily COVID-19 update.
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