First person to recover from virus discharged from NCID
The first case of a person here recovering from the virus was announced yesterday.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) said Case 7, a 35-year-old Wuhan resident who was confirmed to be infected on Jan 27, was discharged from the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) yesterday.
The man has recovered and comprehensively tested negative for the virus.
He arrived in Singapore on Jan 23 and stayed at Marina Bay Sands where he developed symptoms a day later. Upon going to Raffles Hospital on Jan 24, he was transferred to NCID via a private ambulance.
At the press conference yesterday, Associate Professor Kenneth Mak, director of medical services at MOH, said the man was completely well and tested negative for the virus three days straight.
He said: "All his symptoms had fully resolved, and he has had consecutive tests over three days where the tests were all negative, so we are quite confident that he has no longer got any infection."
He added that another patient may be discharged soon.
"One of the (other) patients is being prepared for a possibility of a discharge over the next few days," he said.
"But we can't commit just yet because it is a decision that the doctors will make as they review their patients on a day-to-day basis, and therefore it will be premature for me to say that he will definitely be discharged."
Prof Mak said at least three of the remaining 17 patients have no symptoms, including two Singaporeans who tested positive for the virus on Monday.
Giving a further update on the rest of the patients, he said many of them continue to make good progress.
"There are five patients who (are on) some oxygen support, and this is not surprising in view of the fact that they had pneumonia and this is basically to support them.
"But none of them are in the ICU (intensive care unit), none of them are critically ill at this point," he said.
As of noon yesterday, 289 suspected cases have tested negative for the virus, while test results for another 20 cases are pending.
MOH has identified a total of 311 close contacts to the 24 confirmed cases, of which 239 are still in Singapore.
Those still here have been contacted and are being quarantined and isolated, save for five people whom MOH is still trying to contact.
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