Proportion of unlinked Covid-19 cases falls to 15% since heightened alert phase kicked in: Ong Ye Kung

SINGAPORE — Singapore is heading in the right direction as the proportion of unlinked cases has fallen from 22 per cent of the overall numbers to 15 per cent since the start of Phase 2 (Heightened Alert) on May 16, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said on Sunday (June 6).

Total number of cases has also fallen from 182 to 116 over the last three weeks.

At the May 31 press conference convened by the multy-ministry task force handling the pandemic, Mr Ong had said that Singapore's daily infection figures can be broken down to three sets of numbers — quarantined before detection, not quarantined but linked to clusters, and unlinked. He had called the unlinked cases as the most worrying among the three categories.

"We are heading in the right direction because of the contribution of everyone," Mr Ong said in a Facebook post on Sunday. "Overall infection numbers over the last 7 days have dropped further from the past week."

The percentage of infected people who were detected while under quarantine has gone up from 57 per cent to 73 per cent, he said.

"This means very little chance for them to move around and spread to others," he said.

"More encouraging is that the unlinked cases have fallen from 18 per cent to 15 per cent."

Singapore reported six community Covid-19 cases on Sunday, only one of whom — a Paya Lebar Methodist Girls’ School student — was unlinked. There were also 14 imported infections.