Two Singaporeans including a 24-year-old female front-line worker at Changi Airport who had apparently taken a third booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine have reportedly been infected by the new Omicron variant. The other is an imported case, a person who returned from Germany via the vaccinated travel lane on December 6.
Both had received the third dose of the COVID-19 vaccines, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Thursday in a statement. One is asymptomatic while the other has mild symptoms, MOH added. The 24-year-old worked in the transit holding area, where MOH said she may have interacted with transit passengers from Omicron-affected countries.
The woman tested COVID-19 positive on December 8 as part of weekly rostered routine testing for border front-line workers. Her polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result revealed traces linked to the Omicron variant. The second case is a 46-year-old woman who returned to Singapore via a vaccinated travel lane from Germany on December 6.
Both people are recovering in isolation at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases. Contact tracing for both cases is underway and the Ministry of Health said all close contacts will be placed on a 10-day quarantine at designated facilities and undergo testing.
Meanwhile, Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE earlier this week said initial lab studies show a third dose of their COVID-19 vaccine may be needed to neutralise the Omicron variant. Researchers observed a 25-fold reduction in neutralising antibodies that fight the variant, compared with the original strain of the virus, in people who got just two shots.
