The Ministry of Health (MOH) has preliminarily confirmed 13 new cases of Covid-19 in Singapore as of 12pm on Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2020.

This brings the total number of cases to 58,495.

All 13 cases are imported.

All of the imported cases had already been placed on Stay-Home Notice upon arrival in Singapore.

There are no new cases of locally-transmitted Covid-19 infection and no new cases in the dormitories.

Further updates will be shared by MOH this evening.

No evidence that new strain of Covid-19 from UK circulating in community

On Dec. 23, MOH said that the National Public Health Laboratory is performing viral genomic sequencing for confirmed Covid-19 cases who had arrived from Europe recently, in light of the reports of the new potentially more contagious B117 strain circulating in the UK.

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 in December 2020.

29 of them have been tested so far for the B117 strain. Of the 29:

• 1 (Case 58504) has been found to carry it.
• 11 cases are "preliminary positive", and MOH is pending "confirmatory results".
• 12 were not infected with the strain.
• 5 had low viral load, and samples cannot be sequenced.

There is "currently no evidence that the B117 strain is circulating in the community," as all the cases had been placed on SHN at dedicated facilities or isolated upon arrival in Singapore, with their close contacts being quarantined.

Daily cases in the past week

Here are the daily case numbers in the past week:

Dec. 18: 9

Dec. 19: 17

Dec. 20: 19

Dec. 21: 10

Dec. 22: 29

Dec. 23: 21

Dec. 24: 13

Top image by Andrew Koay.