Singapore — Health Minister Ong Ye Kung announced that a new Covid-19 treatment facility (CTF) began operations on Monday (Feb 14) to help hospitals care for the most vulnerable in the community amid a spike in cases due to the Omicron wave.
The new CTF is located at the Singapore Expo’s Hall 9 equipped with about 600 beds for children and their caregivers, and 224 beds for the elderly, said Mr Ong in a Facebook post on Monday.
“As the Omicron variant is more likely to infect children than the Delta variant, this new facility will complement our hospitals in providing care to paediatric patients should they need to be hospitalised,” said Mr Ong.
“The best defence is still to get our children vaccinated,” he added.
With the latest addition of Hall 9, Singapore now has about 4,500 CTF beds, said Mr Ong, noting good progress has been made in ramping up capacity.
His post included a video highlighting new CTF features in automation and technology.
Hall 9 utilises a robot to deliver and collect linen. It can also disinfect areas.
The new CTF also has a spacious exercise area and more family rooms.
The family room showcased in the video has double beds as well as cutlery, toys and colouring materials for children.
At the end of his post, Mr Ong thanked various partners, such as The Ascott Limited, Constellar Holdings, Raffles Medical Group, Surbana Jurong and Temasek, for working with the Ministry of Health (MOH) on this national effort.
Reports noted that children aged five to 11 have the highest rate of Covid-19 in Singapore, with about 67 cases per 100,000 population.
The next highest infection rate is those ages 12 to 19, at about 55 cases per 100,000 individuals.
MOH reported 9,420 new Covid-19 cases on Sunday (Feb 13), comprising 9,195 local and 225 imported infections.
MOH also reported four deaths, taking the death toll from Covid-19-related complications to 897. /TISG