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Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

Coronavirus: Singapore develops new serological test to establish links between cases

  • The test can detect antibodies in blood samples for contact tracing and establishing links between cases
  • The city-state has also banned short-term visitors from the South Korean cities at the heart of a surge in virus cases

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South Korean tourists pictured at an airport leaving Israel on Monday. Photo: AFP
Dewey Sim
Singapore on Tuesday announced a medical research team had developed the world’s first serological test that could be used for establishing links between coronavirus patients.
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The test kit by Duke-NUS Medical School researchers can detect antibodies in the blood samples of infected patients, even if they have recovered.

By using this test, investigators were able to determine the links between two existing clusters of Covid-19 patients in the city state. They established that a since-recovered couple who had been to The Life Church and Missions Singapore and were infected by a pair of Chinese tourists had passed the virus to a 28-year-old male at the Lunar New Year gathering, with him becoming the primary case in the Grace Assembly of God cluster.

There are three other infection clusters or sites that connect several patients are: a construction site, a hotel business meeting and a health products shop with a mainly Chinese clientele.

Health authorities said it was not common to be able to link up clusters of infections together, and described the development as a “big success”.

“This is important for us because without any of the established links, there’s always going to be some uncertainty in how transmissions took place,” the health ministry said.

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“When you don’t have the ability to connect various groups of people having the infections together, there will be a concern on whether or not that this could have been spread by someone unknown or some mysterious person.”

Singapore on Tuesday reported one new virus case – a partner of a patient – bringing its total number of cases to 91. Of these, 33 are still in hospital while 58 have been discharged.

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