BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Brunei reported one new case of COVID-19 on Friday, bringing the national tally to 236.
According to Brunei's Ministry of Health, the new case is a man who arrived in the country from the United States on March 15. Both the RT-PCR test results before he arrived in the country and the current repeat tests during the quarantine period were negative.
The case was well throughout his time in Brunei and did not show any symptom. The patient has been admitted to the National Isolation Center after his preliminary test was found positive on Thursday.
The Ministry of Health conducted further tests on the case to ascertain when the case was infected. These tests have found that the case is an old infection and it is very likely that this case was infected before arriving in Brunei.
The ministry said that a repeat SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test was also performed on Thursday on this case and the result was negative. Scientific studies have found that a person who has been infected with SARS-CoV-2 is more likely to continue to have non-viable virus remnants in their respiratory tract for up to a year after being infected and therefore, sometimes will still have positive test results even after being infected for a long time. However, old cases like this case cannot infect others.
Although this case has been identified as an old infection, the health ministry is still conducting contact tracing and SARS-CoV-2 testing on contacts for this case to ensure that there is no active infection occurring in the community.
More than 200 contacts have been identified and 14 of them have come forward for SARS-CoV-2 testing on Thursday, whose results were all negative. The remaining contacts have been instructed to undergo testing as soon as possible.
The health ministry urged that anyone in Brunei who has had any contact with the new case in the past 14 days is advised to get a SARS-CoV-2 test and the public is also encouraged to get the COVID-19 vaccine injection.
The Ministry of Health stressed the importance for the public and premise owners to continue to take precautionary measures such as isolating themselves from others when experiencing signs of infection; scanning health tracking QR codes and checking body temperature when entering premises; and refraining from leaving Brunei through unauthorized routes.
According to the health ministry, the new case is being treated and monitored at the National Isolation Center with the other seven active cases who are all in a stable condition.
With the detection of this case, a total of 95 imported cases have been confirmed since the last local infection case on May 6, 2020. Brunei has recorded 380 days without local COVID-19 infection cases.
There have been three deaths and 225 recovered patients reported from COVID-19 so far in Brunei. Enditem