SINGAPORE – The wife and housemate of a 33-year-old Chinese man who tested positive for Covid-19 last Saturday have also tested positive for the infection, forming a new local cluster, according to the Ministry of Health (MOH) in a statement on Tuesday night (Jan 19).

The two Chinese nationals are work permit holders who were identified as close contacts and put under quarantine last Friday. Both subsequently tested positive for the infection on Sunday during their quarantine periods.

The woman is 48 years old and employed as a food processing worker at Soon Lee Heng Satay Foodstuff Manufacturer located in Woodlands Loop, while the man is 31 and a co-worker of the previous case at Golden Bridge Foods Manufacturing in Senoko.

Both were asymptomatic when tested and have had their serological tests come back negative, indicating a likely current infection.

“Two of the newly confirmed cases (Cases 59419 and 59420) are linked to one previous case (Case 59343) to form the Case 59343 cluster,” said MOH in its statement.

The announcement of this new cluster comes on the back of multi-ministry task force co-chair Lawrence Wong’s warning on Monday that additional measures may be necessary as community cases inch up in Singapore.

Earlier on Tuesday, it was also announced that a pilot programme to reopen karaoke venues and nightclubs would be put on pause indefinitely due to rising community infections.

This is the second local cluster that has been discovered in recent weeks. MOH also reported that another case has been linked to the para-vet cluster, bringing the number of cases up to seven.

He is an eight-year-old boy who is the son of the administrative officer and his wife who previously tested positive for the infection. The boy is a pupil at Chua Chu Kang Primary School, and had last gone to school last Friday. He was identified as a close contact of the couple and quarantined the next day.

He was swabbed on the same day and his result came back negative for Covid-19.

MOH says that this means there is therefore no risk of transmission to the pupils he had contact with previously.

However, the boy subsequently developed a fever on Sunday while he was in quarantine, and was tested again at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. This time, his test came back positive for the virus. His serological test result has come back negative, indicating that this is likely a current infection.

The final community case reported on Tuesday is currently unlinked.

He is a 39-year-old permanent resident who works as a sales personnel at BS Industrial & Construction Supply in Kallang.

He developed a fever last Saturday, and went to a polyclinic two days later, where he was tested for the virus.

His test result came back positive for Covid-19 infection on the same day, and he was taken to hospital in an ambulance. His serological test result has come back negative, indicating that this is likely a current infection.

Along with these four community cases, there were also 26 imported cases for a total of 30, bringing Singapore’s total up to 59,157.

The 26 cases comprised four Singaporeans, three permanent residents, two student’s pass holders, one work pass holder and 16 work permit holders, of whom three are foreign domestic workers.

The Singaporeans and PRs arrived from Indonesia, Ireland, Myanmar and Britain. The two student pass holders came from Bulgaria and Malaysia, while the one work pass holder travelled from the United Arab Emirates. The 16 work permit holders came from Bangladesh, India and Indonesia.

The number of cases in the community has increased to 14 cases in the past week from six cases the week before. The number of unlinked cases in the community has also increased to five cases in the past week from four cases in the week before.

With 26 cases discharged on Tuesday, 58,879 patients have fully recovered from the disease.

A total of 45 patients remain in hospital, with none in intensive care, while 189 are recuperating in community facilities.

Singapore has had 29 deaths from Covid-19 complications, while 15 who tested positive have died of other causes.

SINGAPORE: A former teacher who sexually abused a 15-year-old student in his car was given four years’ jail on Thursday (Nov 26).

The 33-year-old former English and Literature teacher pleaded guilty earlier this week to one count of sexual penetration of a minor and two counts of an indecent act with a young person.

Another three similar charges, including offences against a second victim, were taken into consideration for sentencing.

The man, who has resigned from teaching and cannot be named to protect the victims’ identities, was allowed to begin his sentence on Nov 30 after settling some family matters.

The offender was popular with students both past and present and often mingled with them, which was how he came to know the first victim.

He first bought her coffee and chatted with her in the canteen about her relationship with her ex-boyfriend in February 2017.  He then met her at her block to chat later that month.

On Feb 25, 2017, he picked her up for a car ride and complimented her looks before driving to another block, where he parked in front of a playground.

He molested and sexually abused her there, but the girl grabbed hold of his wrist and said “no” when he asked if she “liked it”.

READ: Former teacher admits sexually abusing 15-year-old student, asking her to pretend he was her ex-boyfriend

In response, he asked her to imagine he was her ex-boyfriend. He then exposed himself to her and asked her to perform a sex act on him, but she closed her eyes and refused, saying she felt uncomfortable.

When the girl returned home, she blocked her teacher on all their chat apps and told her close friends what had happened. School staff members went to her house as she had not showed up for classes since the incident. The girl then filed a police report later that day.

The Ministry of Education said the offender is no longer employed by the ministry as of September 2018.

“MOE takes a serious view of staff misconduct and will not hesitate to take disciplinary action against those who fail to adhere to our standards of conduct and discipline, including dismissal from service,” a spokesperson said.

For sexual penetration of a minor, the man could have been jailed for up to 10 years, fined, or both. For an indecent act on a young person, he could have been jailed for up to five years, fined up to S$10,000, or both.

SINGAPORE: A secondary school teacher, who was popular with students, sexually abused a 15-year-old student in his car and asked her to imagine he was her ex-boyfriend.

The 33-year-old man, who cannot be named due to gag orders protecting the identity of the victim, pleaded guilty on Tuesday (Nov 24) to one count of sexual penetration of a minor and two counts of an indecent act with a young person.

Another three similar charges will be taken into consideration for sentencing.

The offender was an English and Literature teacher at a secondary school not named in court documents, while the victim was a Secondary 4 student at the time.

In late 2016, the teacher began sending text messages to the victim, moving on to communicate over Snapchat and Telegram, and later inviting her to join a school team he was in charge of.

The victim declined but agreed in February 2017 to his offer to buy her a coffee. The teacher met the victim in the school canteen and passed her the drink before asking if she had time to talk.

They chatted at the canteen, with the teacher asking her questions on topics like her relationship with her ex-boyfriend.

The following week, he sent a message to a chat group to ask if either of the two girls there were free and wanted to meet.

The victim responded that she was available, while her classmate did not reply. The teacher met the victim at the void deck of her block and they chatted for about an hour on Feb 22, 2017.

That weekend, he asked the victim to meet him for a ride and told her not to tell anyone about this.

He drove to her home on Feb 25, 2017, and complimented her looks before driving the girl to another block “to play cards”.

He parked in front of a playground and began touching the girl, asking if she trusted him. He molested her and the teen did not respond.

He later sexually abused her, but she felt uncomfortable and grabbed hold of his wrist. When he asked if “she liked it”, she said no. But he removed his hand and asked her to imagine that he was her ex-boyfriend.

He then exposed himself, with the victim closing her eyes, and asked her to perform a sex act on him. The teenager told the teacher that she felt uncomfortable and refused.

The teacher eventually drove to buy food and took the victim to the Marina Bay area before taking her home, reminding her not to tell anyone about what had happened.

When the teenager reached home, she blocked her teacher on the mobile apps they used to communicate with each other.

The next Monday, she told her close friends what happened and the incident was flagged to the school. As the victim had not gone to school since the incident, staff members went to her home and a police report was filed later that day.

A GRIEVOUS ABUSE OF TRUST: PROSECUTOR

Deputy Public Prosecutor James Chew asked for four years’ jail, saying that the man’s actions represented “a grievous abuse of trust as a teacher” and were premeditated.

The victim also suffered psychologically due to his actions, and now feels she cannot trust people she has just met. She also felt she should not go to school, in order to avoid the offender.

When she sees people waiting at the void deck, she is scared, and suffers occasional flashbacks of the incident, said Mr Chew.

“There clearly is a duty on teachers to not only abide by the law, abide by the code of conduct stipulated by MOE (Ministry of Education) in terms of their interactions with all students,” said Mr Chew, adding that the offender’s actions gravely fell short of these standards.

“The key issue here is one of public interest, because where teachers abuse the trust reposed in them by the public, by parents, by students and commit such offences, it calls into question the safety and security of our schools.”

He added that the victim was taking her O-Level examinations that year and the incident was “certainly not something that would have been helpful to the victim and certainly to the contrary”.

Defence lawyer Edmond Pereira said four years’ jail was “unduly high”. He said his client has no previous convictions, resides with his parents and has since resigned from teaching.

He said the “delay” in investigations and prosecution has caused a lot of uncertainty in the man’s life, resulting in him only working part-time and unable to acquire a permanent job as he knew he would have to go to prison.

He was also affected psychologically by the case and had to seek counselling, said Mr Pereira.

A POPULAR TEACHER, UNLIKELY TO REOFFEND: DEFENCE

“The accused is a very popular teacher in the school and would meet up with a lot of students, present and past, and they would always meet in the school courtyard and that’s how he met the (victim),” Mr Pereira said.

The lawyer said the former teacher is unlikely to reoffend, and has “strong familial support”, though he added that the offender’s parents are “extremely embarrassed about what has happened”.

In response, the prosecutor acknowledged that it took a few years for investigations to be completed, but said it was not an inordinate delay.

He explained that a second victim in the charges taken into consideration had to be located and investigations were carried out. These charges involve the offender showing a 15-year-old girl an obscene video in a car, kissing her and placing his hand on her thigh before moving it upwards.

The judge adjourned sentencing to Nov 26.

In response to CNA’s queries, MOE said on Tuesday evening that the man is no longer employed by the ministry as of September 2018.

“MOE takes a serious view of staff misconduct and will not hesitate to take disciplinary action against those who fail to adhere to our standards of conduct and discipline, including dismissal from service,” a spokesperson said.

For sexual penetration of a minor, the man could be jailed for up to 10 years, fined, or both. For an indecent act on a young person, he could be jailed for up to five years, fined up to S$10,000, or both.

SINGAPORE – Singapore has confirmed 17 new Covid-19 cases, including 11 that are imported, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said on Monday (March 16).

It is the highest number of new cases Singapore has reported in a single day.

Among them is an 86-year-old Singaporean man, the oldest to be infected so far.

Four of the 17 confirmed patients are linked to previous ones while two are unlinked.

This brings the total number of infected patients here to 243.

An earlier case, announced on Sunday (March 15), is a 30-year-old Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officer working at Sengkang Fire Station, MOH said at a press briefing.

Further investigations have also showed that one of the new cases – case 235, a 31-year-old Singaporean woman who works as a medical social worker at the Singapore General Hospital – is linked to three earlier cases.

The three cases – 144, 208 and 214 – are all contacts from the Church of Singapore (Bukit Timah branch).

* Case 144 is a 58-year-old Singaporean woman who is a contact of Case 140, and is linked to the Safra Jurong cluster. She is a hairdresser at her home at Jurong West Street 74, and had attended to customers after the onset of symptoms .

*Case 208 is a 26-year-old female Singapore citizen who has no recent travel history to affected countries and regions. Prior to hospital admission, she had gone to work as a medical social worker at SGH.

* Case 214 is a 29-year-old male Singapore citizen with no recent travel history to affected countries and region. He is currently warded in an isolation room at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID).

MOH said four more patients have been discharged, so there are now a total of 109 who have fully recovered.

The 134 still in hospital are mostly stable and improving, but 13 remain in critical condition in the intensive care unit.

On Sunday, Singapore announced further measures to reduce importation of coronavirus infections , and advised residents to defer all non-essential travel abroad to reduce their risks of contracting the virus during this coronavirus pandemic.

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed on Wednesday (Dec 2).

Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September, but NASA’s top asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, quickly suspected it was the Centaur upper rocket stage from Surveyor 2, a failed 1966 moon-landing mission.

Size estimates had put it in the range of the old Centaur, which was about 10m long and 3m in diameter.

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Chodas was proven right after a team led by the University of Arizona’s Vishnu Reddy used an infrared telescope in Hawaii to observe not only the mystery object, but – just on Tuesday – a Centaur from 1971 still orbiting Earth. The data from the images matched.

“This conclusion was the result of a tremendous team effort,” Reddy said in a statement. “We were finally able to solve this mystery.”

The object formally known as 2020 SO entered a wide, lopsided orbit around Earth last month and, on Tuesday, made its closest approach at about 50,000km.

It will depart the neighbourhood in March next year, shooting back into its own orbit around the sun. Its next return: 2036.