SINGAPORE - There were around 330 Covid-19 cases in hospitals here and 3,000 cases in nursing homes in the six months from April to September 2022.

Taken together, they constitute less than 1 per cent of total reported community cases over this period, Senior Minister of State for Health Janil Puthucheary told Parliament on Monday.

Dr Janil was responding to a question by Workers’ Party chairman Sylvia Lim (Aljunied GRC) on Covid-19 cases in these settings, and whether the Ministry of Health (MOH) is satisfied with the effectiveness of safety measures at such facilities.

“As we move towards living with Covid-19, we no longer adopt a zero-Covid-19 posture in hospitals and nursing homes, where all patients or nursing home residents need to be tested before admission and where infected patients are isolated in hospital Covid-19 wards,” he said.

“Notwithstanding these measures, we continue to take necessary precautions to protect patients and residents, and are ready to step up the Covid-19 measures, such as visitor restrictions, when necessary.”

Dr Janil said vaccination has been rolled out for more than 90 per cent of eligible nursing home residents, and with these measures, Singapore’s overall case fatality rate has been kept at about 0.1 per cent, which is well below the global average of around 1 per cent.

Ms Lim asked if the infection numbers were underestimates of the actual situation because some patients could be asymptomatic and there may not be daily testing.

Dr Janil said MOH takes a risk-based approach to testing, and while the numbers may be an underestimate, they provide a robust handle on the situation.

“We have quite a lot of data over the last three years and that data is applicable to the community setting – the hospitals as well as nursing homes,” he said.

Such data has enabled the Government and scientists here to model Covid-19 clusters and the spread of the virus within different settings, he added.

The Government will continue to look at how ward design and ventilation can affect hospital-acquired infections, said Dr Janil.

This was in response to Ms Lim’s point that some overseas studies have shown that hospital-acquired infections may be affected by ventilation systems, and how hospital wards have been designed.