It was announced earlier that there’s only one COVID-19 confirmed case in Singapore today (21 February 2020), and it’s a 24-year-old Singaporean student from Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT).
SIT has a main temporary campus at Dover Drive. Other than that, the school has various tiny campus in all polytechnics in Singapore, and will have its main centralised campus ready in Punggol by 2023.
SIT has an official response to the case, and it’s revealed that the student had not been the campus since the onset of symptoms.
Now, before anything, do note that according to Dr Leong Hoe Nam, an infectious disease specialist in Singapore, a person who has COVID-19 has a lower chance to have passed the virus to another person if he has no symptoms yet, as he’s “less likely” to cough or have nasal discharge.
SIT’s Official Response After Student Infected With COVID-19
People know about the case this afternoon after an email was circulated this afternoon, but it was only tonight that SIT officially responds to the case.
According to the school, the student is a Year 3 Telematics student and is based in [email protected] campus (the one at Dover Drive).
At this moment, students are having their recess week so chances are, there are less students in the campus.
The patient was last on the campus on 14 February 2020 afternoon. As mentioned earlier, he had not had any contact with any students or staff after the onset of symptoms later that night.
However, as a precautionary measure, the school is also imposing a 14-day Leave of Absence (LOA) on students and staff who had close contact with the patient even before he had shown any symptom.
These students who are on LOA can still continue with their lessons online.
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And to play safe, the school has also deep-cleansed and disinfected all lecture theatres, seminar rooms and laboratories used by the Year 3 Telematics cohort.
From Monday onwards, all classes with more than 50 students will be cancelled and converted into e-learning as well.
So go ahead and attend class normally if you need to. After all, according to Dr Leong, places with confirmed cases are apparently the cleanest places in Singapore so far since they’ve been cleaned a lot more thoroughly.
