SINGAPORE, Dec 10 — Singapore has detected two more COVID-19 cases testing preliminarily positive for the Omicron variant, with one being a local case involving an airport frontline worker, and the other is an imported case.
“Both cases are fully vaccinated and have received their booster shots. One is asymptomatic while the other has mild symptoms,” said the republic’s Ministry of Health (MOH) in a statement issued late Thursday.
The ministry said the two cases have been recovering in isolation wards at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID).
MOH said it is conducting aggressive contact tracing to ring-fence the cases.
The first case is a 24-year old female Singaporean who works as a passenger service staff at Changi Airport Terminals 1 and 3, and had also worked at the transit holding area, where she may have interacted with transit passengers from Omicron affected countries, it said.
Labeled as Case 276363, the MOH said she did not work at Terminal 4, where the three earlier cases of Omicron infections had been to.
She was tested for COVID-19 on Dec 8 as part of weekly Rostered Routine Testing (RRT) for border frontline workers, and her polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result revealed the presence of S-gene Target Failure, which may be associated with the Omicron variant, it said.
The second case which is labeled as Case 276223, is a 46-year old female Singapore Permanent Resident who returned to Singapore via a Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) from Germany on board Singapore Airlines SQ325 on Dec 6.
“Her pre-departure test in France on Dec 4 was negative for COVID-19 infection. Upon arrival in Singapore, her PCR test on Dec 6 came back negative.
“On Dec 7, she developed a runny nose and sought medical treatment on Dec 8. She was tested positive for COVID-19 infection on the same day, and confirmed to have S-gene Target Failure on Dec 9, it said.
Singapore had on Monday (Nov 6) confirmed the Omicron variant in the first two imported COVID-19 cases, initially suspected to be the carriers of the variant.
The confirmatory test result for another imported case labeled as Case 273611 is pending, it said.
“Given its high transmissibility and spread to many parts of the world, we should expect to find more Omicron cases at our borders and also within our community,” said MOH.
