SINGAPORE: More than 33,100 COVID-19 tests have been conducted on pre-school staff members as of Tuesday (May 26), with 12 staff testing positive, said Ministry of Health (MOH) Director of Medical Services Kenneth Mak on Thursday (May 28).
Earlier this month, the authorities announced that all teaching and non-teaching staff at pre-schools would be tested for COVID-19, in order to reduce the risk of transmission when centres resume full services.
Advertisement Advertisement The 12 staff members who tested positive as of Tuesday make up about 0.036 per cent of all positive COVID-19 cases, Assoc Prof Mak told reporters at a multi-ministry COVID-19 task force press conference on Thursday.
In addition to the swab screening tests, serology tests were also performed for these cases.
Eleven of them had positive serology tests, while the remaining staff member's result is pending.
[h=3]READ: All pre-school staff to be swabbed for COVID-19 before centres resume full services[/h] Advertisement Advertisement The results of the serology tests and polymerase chain reaction tests were “critically evaluated”, and evidence suggests that these are not active infections, but old infections, said Assoc Prof Mak.
"As a result, it is our evaluation and our assessment that none of these staff members currently are a risk to either other colleagues within the pre-school setting, or to the children that are supported and cared for by the pre-school staff," he said.
"And this, of course, means that they are not infectious and there’s less of a concern."
"The majority of the staff members are asymptomatic, they are all well," he said of the twelve positive cases, adding that all the staff members have made a full recovery.
This also reaffirms the authorities' assessment that there was “some level” of community spread before Singapore's "circuit breaker" was imposed, said Assoc Prof Mak, noting that the pre-school staff members who tested positive would have been exposed to COVID-19 infection earlier and therefore become infected themselves.
“But with the circuit breaker in place, we have seen the number of community active cases are coming down very significantly, which is consistent with our assessment that the circuit breaker measures have been effective.”
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