BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN — A total of 104 new coronavirus cases were detected in the past 24 hours, raising the cumulative number of active cases to 1,432 on Monday.
The health ministry has cleared its backlog of COVID-19 swab samples and is now expected to report overnight cases after expanding its testing capacity from over 2,000 to 8,000 tests a day.
Health authorities had hoped that timely test results would provide a clearer indication of Brunei’s infection trend and better manage its most serious outbreak yet.
Seventy of the new cases announced on Monday have not been linked to any of the 28 active clusters.
Since the second COVID-19 wave began over two weeks ago, the ministry has yet to ascertain the source of 554 infections, or 36.1 percent of the total cases.
Among the new cases, five were linked to The Mall cluster, which has a total of 39 infections.
Brunei’s two largest active clusters — Chung Hua Middle School Kuala Belait and Champion 7 oil field added two more cases each, bringing their respective total to 243 and 224.
A new cluster of 10 cases have been linked to Patient 418.
Seventeen people were discharged overnight after making full recoveries, while 31 patients are in the Intensive Care Unit.
The national COVID-19 tally stands at 1,873.
COVID-19 patient dies of heart failure
During the COVID-19 press briefing, Health Minister YB Dato Seri Setia Dr Hj Mohammad Isham Hj Jaafar also announced that a COVID-19 patient – Case 1379 — died of heart failure.
However, the 56-year-old man’s death is not classified as a coronavirus-related death.
Case 1379 was said to have been admitted to the National Isolation Centre on Sunday and passed away a day later.
This is the second death reported in three days after another man who contracted COVID-19 died of a heart attack.