Minister of Heath Ong Ye Kung said in a written parliamentary answer to MP He Ting Ru on Tuesday that there were 8,845 cases of Covid reinfection over 5 months, according to CNA.
He said that the reinfections were found from the period of 1 November 2021 to 25 March 2022, with the majority of them being under 60-years-old and suffering mild symptoms.
One case was conveyed to the ICU, while two other cases had died, out of the 8,845.
Since the onset of the Covid pandemic, Singapore has seen more than 1,123,000 Covid cases, along with 1,287 deaths.
The Delta variant saw a surge in cases last year before the Omicron wave then started surging earlier this year.
Ong said in a written parliamentary answer last November that there were 32 reinfections as of 16 August 2021, with one-third of the cases being residents in dormitories, and the remaining being imported.
The NCID’s findings last month from a clinical trial that was conducted on 100 participants who received the Pfizer jab as their primary vaccination, showed that older adults who had the Moderna booster jab had an antibody response that was “significantly higher”.
50 percent of the study group were below 60-years-old, with the other half being above 60-years-old, although 2 participants dropped out of the study.
Head of the Singapore Infectious Disease Clinical Research Network at NCID, Dr Barnaby Young, said that according to the interim results from the study, the Omicron variant is able to escape immunity among fully vaccinated people.
He added that the Moderna/Pfizer booster jab helps to increase the “serum neutralizing activity” against the Omicron variant by more than 50%.
He added that the antibody boost is likely to offer significant protection against this variant, but warned that there remains a concern about the emergence of variants that can evade protective immunity, and highlighted the necessetity for an immunisation strategy over the long term.