Ever since Chinese New Year Eve, MOH has been busy updating us about new Wuhan virus confirmed cases almost every day at around 8pm.
Here’s a list of updates made since the index patient was announced on 23 January 2020:
23 January 2020: 1st case announced
24 January 2020: 2nd and 3rd case announced
25 January 2020: No new case announced
26 January 2020: 4th case announced
27 January 2020: 5th case announced
28 January 2020: 6th and 7th case announced
29 January 2020: 8th, 9th and 10th case announced
30 January 2020: 11th, 12th and 13th case announced
31 January 2020: 14th, 15th and 16th case announced
32 January 2020: In an alternate universe, the world is free of Wuhan virus
1 February 2020: 17th and 18th case announced
Now, do note that these are the dates that the cases were announced; some of them were tested positive a day before that.
So as you would be able to see, since the first patient was announced, there hasn’t been a day without a new announced case except for 25 January 2020.
Now we can add one more day to a zero-patient day, and hopefully more to come.
No New Cases of Wuhan Virus in Singapore on 2 Feb 2020
Today, MOH released a media statement that’ll send cheers all over Singapore.
This is the sentence that’s music to our ears: “As of 2 February 2020, 2pm, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has not been notified of any new confirmed cases of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) infection in Singapore.”
Cue the dancing cockroaches, please!
To those frontline warriors who’ve been battling the virus since the year of the Rat: well done!
More Details About the 18th Case
If you’ve read yesterday’s article, you’d know that details about the 18th case weren’t revealed then.
Today, more information about the confirmed case is provided.
The patient is a travelling companion of the 12th case, a patient who arrived in Singapore on 22 January 2020 and had stayed in three hotels. This 18th case, however, merely stayed in one hotel (Home Suite View Hotel) and had been transferred to a government quarantine facility (GQF) once she was identified as a close contact of the 12th case. While at the quarantine zone, she said that she had a cough and was immediately taken to National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), whereby she was tested positive on the next day.
In other words, the authorities’ SOP works very well to isolate this latest patient.
Status of Singapore
As of 12pm today, 43 cases are still pending.
For contact tracing, 251 close contacts have been identified, and 182 of them are still in Singapore. 179 of them have been contacted and MOH is still trying to contact the remaining 3 contacts.
Since yesterday 11:59pm, Singapore isn’t allowing anyone from China to enter our soil. People who’ve been to China in the last 14 days would not be given a visa as well.
As of 1pm today, 15 people have been denied entry to Singapore.
It’s not certain how these 15 people, comprising 1 Spanish, 1 British, 1 Malaysian, 2 US, 5 PRC and 5 Indian passport holders, could go back to their countries.
Now, let’s look forward to more zero-new-case days!