Singapore — Professor Kenneth Mak, director of medical services at the Ministry of Health (MOH), said on Thursday (Aug 19) that several recent Covid deaths in Singapore are related to the Delta variant.
So far, nine people have died from Covid-related issues this month, the highest number of deaths within one month since the pandemic began. The deaths include one fully vaccinated man, a 90-year-old Singaporean who had other medical issues.
The country’s death toll now stands at 46.
The latest death is that of a 64-year-old unvaccinated male who died from Covid-19 complications on Monday (Aug 16), which was reported by MOH on Aug 18.
Prof Mak made these remarks in answer to a question from Yahoo Singapore at a virtual multi-ministry taskforce conference on Thursday.
While he did not say specifically how many deaths this month are linked to the Delta variant, he said that “a number” had been found to be linked to Delta or its mutations, based on the people who had died who had been through phylogenetic testing.
“They are not all necessarily the same but as a cluster evolves, sometimes you do see minor mutations or minor variations take place, but they are all related to the Delta variant that we have picked up. So these deaths are not…of other variants,” the MOH director is quoted as saying.
Prof Mak added that nearly all the most recent deaths had been linked to some of the community clusters that emerged lately.
Viral genomic sequencing performed some months ago at the National Public Health Laboratory showed that the Delta variant of Covid-19, which was first detected in India, had become Singapore’s major local virus strain.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Health told Bloomberg News in Jun that the “current understanding” is that certain strains, including the Delta mutation, “are more transmissible” and added that, “studies are ongoing to get a more complete understanding of these variants and we will adjust our strategies as more information is made available.”
Yahoo Singapore noted that as of Aug 11, there are 2,913 cases of the Delta variant in the country, according to the biggest database of novel coronavirus genome sequences around the globe.
It added that all the infections in Singapore in the four weeks previous to Aug 11 are attributed to the Delta variant. /TISG
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