SINGAPORE, May 12 — Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) today confirmed 884 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the infection tally for the republic to 24,671.
The preliminary data as at noon today showed that only three cases involved Singaporeans or permanent residents while the rest were work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories.
In a statement here, MOH said it was still working through the details of the cases and would provide an update later in the day.
Late yesterday Singapore reported that 35 cases that were verified to be negative for COVID-19 have been removed from the count of total confirmed cases.
Thus, the updated tally for Monday was 23,787.
The ministry first alerted on Sunday that it had found that 33 cases from a laboratory were false positives, due to an apparatus calibration issue for one of its test kits.
The MOH said subsequent retesting at the National Public Health Laboratory confirmed that these were negative cases.
The ministry said it has taken immediate action to rectify the situation, adding that the laboratory has stopped all tests and is working to resolve the calibration issue.
In addition, the MOH said there were two results that had been equivocal, and were subsequently verified to be negative upon re-testing.
Singapore has so far classified 1,329 as community cases, 580 as imported cases, 468 cases involving foreign workers staying outside dorms and 21,410 cases of foreign workers residing in dorms.
