A 30-year-old Indian national who works as an engineer at Station Satcom, received his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine on January 27, was among the 2 community cases that MOH announced on February 8.
The man boards ships to install communications and IT equipment as part of his job requisites.
He was placed on quarantine from January 13 to 24 because he was identified as a close contact of a previous case, and his swabs taken during quarantine were all negative for the virus, with the last swab test being done on January 29.
However, on February 4, he developed fatigue and on the next day, he had a fever; but he did not seek medical attention.
As part of a rostered routine testing, he was tested on February 5 and his result came back positive – he was then conveyed to NCID in an ambulance.
MOH said:
“While his serological test taken on Feb 7 has come back positive, this is assessed to be a recent infection as he is symptomatic, and the Ct value for his polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test was low.”
“As the vaccine does not contain live virus, he could not have been infected due to vaccination.”
“It is possible for one to be infected just before or just after vaccination as it typically takes a few weeks for an individual to build up immunity after completing vaccination.”