SINGAPORE - A 63-year-old man died of complications due to Covid-19 on Thursday (Aug 5).
He had developed a fever and cough on Tuesday and was sent to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital on Thursday after collapsing at home, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Friday night in its daily update on the Covid-19 situation in Singapore.
He was confirmed to have Covid-19 after his death.
The man had not been vaccinated against Covid-19 and had a history of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
This is the fourth Covid-19 death in the past five days. In all, 41 have died of complications due to the coronavirus.
MOH reported five new clusters on Friday, including one from the Jem mall in Jurong East and catering firm Elsie’s Kitchen. Both clusters have four cases each.
This is the second time that Jem has had a cluster. It was part of a cluster with Westgate mall that grew to 63 cases and was closed on June 28.
In total, there are currently 126 active clusters in Singapore, with three to 1,134 cases each.
The Jurong Fishery Port cluster remains the largest active cluster to date, with 1,134 cases.
In all, there were 97 new Covid-19 cases on Friday, taking Singapore’s total to 65,605.
Four cases were imported, while 93 cases were locally transmitted.
Of the new local cases, 56 were linked to previous cases and had already been quarantined, while another eight linked cases were not in quarantine when detected. The remaining 29 were unlinked.
MOH said there are 546 patients in hospital, down from 577 on Thursday.
Of these, 38 require oxygen supplementation, while seven are in critical condition in the intensive care unit.
Six of these 45 patients are fully vaccinated. Five require oxygen supplementation, and one requires intensive care as they have underlying medical conditions, said MOH.
Thirty-five seniors above the age of 60 are seriously ill, and of these, 30 are completely unvaccinated or partially vaccinated.
MOH also said the number of new cases in the community has fallen from 878 in the week before to 671 in the past week, while the number of unlinked cases has decreased from 244 to 203 in the same period.
It added that 67 per cent of Singapore’s population are fully vaccinated as at Aug 5, while 78 per cent have received at least one dose.