SINGAPORE: Singapore is intensifying its testing programme to pick up COVID-19 cases early in response to the current COVID-19 infection wave in the community, according to the republic's multi-ministry taskforce (MTF) on COVID-19.

At the current trajectory, the MTF said "it is likely that we will soon reach more than 1,000 daily cases, detected early through intensified testing."

MTF noted that the current infection wave began on Aug 23 and this is the first time the republic is experiencing such an exponentially rising wave of infection in the community.

On Sept 9, Singapore detected a total of 450 community cases of COVID-19 infection.

The MTF said the number of daily cases has been rising over the past fortnight, from an average of 76 cases per day a fortnight ago to 288 cases per day in the past week.

At a virtual press conference today, the MTF co-chair who is also the republic's Trade and Industry Minister, Gan Kim Yong, said "the sharp rate of increase is worrying."

"Although our vaccination rate has now surpassed that of many countries and is one of the highest in the world, we want to be sure that the number of cases does not suddenly spike which can lead to more serious cases and which in turn, overwhelm our healthcare system.

"Therefore we want to be cautious and give ourselves more time to be certain that the high number of daily cases will not result in a high number of serious cases or deaths," he said.

Gan said the next two to four weeks is therefore crucial for Singapore "as we will find out if patients eventually develop serious illnesses and complications, subsequently."

"We are using the next few weeks to give us time to monitor the number of serious cases, ramp up our testing capacity, and continue to increase our vaccination coverage. This will allow us to move forward with more confidence in time to come," he said.

"As we enter more uncharted waters in the coming days, we will need to step up testing and make it a key part of our strategy, in our journey towards COVID-19 resilience," he said.

Gan noted that testing is also important for businesses as infections that are caught early are less likely to see large clusters which, in turn, create severe disruptions to businesses operations.

For now, the MTF said the number of serious cases remains low.

As of Sept 9, there are 26 cases of serious illness requiring oxygen supplementation, and seven in critical condition in the intensive care unit (ICU).

The MTF noted that there continues to be strong evidence that vaccination provided protection against severe illness.

Among fully vaccinated cases in the past 28 days, the MTF said 99.2 per cent were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms while among unvaccinated and partially vaccinated individuals, 95.1 per cent were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms.

As of Sept 8, 81 per cent of Singapore's population has completed their full regimen/received two doses of COVID-19 vaccines, and 83 per cent has received at least one dose.

-- BERNAMA