Singapore has reported 9,392 fresh COVID infections, while the cumulative death toll has climbed to 1,411 with another fatality.
The daily number of infections yesterday was a fall from the 11,504 cases reported on Tuesday, which was the highest in more than three months.
Covid cases in Singapore tend to increase on Tuesdays, with Health Minister Ong Ye Kung previously referring to such a pattern, writing on Facebook in October 2021 that numbers would “always spike after the weekends”.
A total of 455 patients are in hospital, according to the latest infection statistics on the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) website on Wednesday night. Forty-six patients require oxygen supplementation.
Seven patients are in the intensive care unit.
The week-on-week infection ratio rose to 1.65 from Tuesday’s 1.62. This refers to the ratio of community cases for the past week over the week before, with a figure above 1 indicating that the number of new weekly COVID-19 cases is rising.
The week-on-week infection ratio has been above 1 since June 14.
Singapore’s recent spike in COVID-19 cases comes after Ong said earlier this month to expect a next wave of infections, as people’s antibodies from vaccinations and infections from the last Omicron wave start to wane.
Among the local cases reported yesterday, 8,075 cases are tested using antigen rapid tests (ARTs) and have been assessed by doctors to have mild symptoms and are of low risk, said MOH.
The remaining 714 local COVID-19 cases were confirmed via polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.
Of the imported cases, 568 were tested using ARTs and 35 using PCR tests.
Singapore has recorded 1,434,563 COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic.
As of Tuesday, 96 per cent of Singapore’s eligible population have completed their full vaccination regimen under the national vaccination programme.
About 78 per cent of the total population have received their vaccine booster shots.
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