35 new cases raise tally to 391, first severe case
Local health authorities have reportedly found a total of 391 positive cases of infections with Covid-19 from June 18 to 5 p.m. yesterday, the coordinator at the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Leong Iek Hou, said at yesterday’s press briefing from the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Center.
The figure includes 35 new cases on June 27 and a further 89 found on Sunday.
Of the 89 cases detected before midnight on June 26, the larger portion (50) were cases found in the community through testing, while the remaining 39 are related to people who are already under medical observation for being in close contact with other infected people.
Of the total number of cases found during the ongoing outbreak, only 88 people are presenting symptoms of the disease, while the majority (269 cases) are asymptomatic.
According to the same official, one case is now considered to be severe, since the patient, a 60-year-old local woman, has been diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia, and is presenting with difficulties in her breathing.
Nonetheless, Leong said that her medical condition is considered stable and that she is being medicated with anti-viral medicines. According to the record of the Health Bureau, the woman has been inoculated with three doses of the Sinopharm’s inactivated virus vaccine.
Except for 30 cases that are still under epidemiological investigation, the remaining cases have been categorized as belonging to the same 10 groups or clusters as previously, with eight out of the 10 cluster group now showing links between them.
Only group 4, the OD Health Club (4 persons) and Shoppes at Four Seasons, and group 6, the China Construction Commercial Building in Rua do Campo (20 persons), have so far not been linked to any other clusters.
On Sunday and Monday, health authorities were able to clarify links from the previous groups 7 and 9 to the second cluster, related to people living at the Tat Cheong building at the Rua de Afonso de Albuquerque and involving some 84 cases.
People without RATs
denied entry to mass testing
At the same press briefing, the representative of the Education and Youth Development Bureau (DSEDJ), Luis Gomes, confirmed that several people have been barred from entering nucleic acid test (NAT) sampling stations because they had failed to present a negative result of a Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) taken the same day.
“We have been asking people [since the previous mass testing round] to do a RAT and ensure that the result was negative before heading to the NAT sample collection stations. The majority have done it. But there were some cases in which people were not able to present this result. Some of them justified this by saying that they did not have any more kits. In those cases, we have supplied them an extra RAT kit and requested them to go back home and do it first before returning to the NAT stations.”
Still, the official said that the results obtained by the government showing that over 570,000 uploaded their RAT results over recent days demonstrate that the vast majority of the population is completing the tests, while some still require information.
At the time of the close of this edition, a total of 326,062 people have completed the mass testing and, of those, 87,373 have already obtained negative results.
Five 10-in-1 samples tested positive as of 9 p.m.
