In a press conference on Feb. 4, the Ministry of Health's director of medical services, Kenneth Mak, announced that all patients in public hospitals who have pneumonia are being tested for the novel coronavirus.

According to Mak, the screening of patients with pneumonia started last week.

This news was released at the same time as the announcement of 6 new cases of the coronavirus in Singapore, including 4 cases of human-to-human transmission.

Case 19 developed pneumonia after contracting the coronavirus

One of the confirmed cases, case 19, is a 28-year-old female resident of Singapore who had no recent travel history to China.

She developed a sore throat and fever on Jan. 29, while working at a Chinese health store at 24 Cavan Road, whose clientele consists mainly of Chinese tourists.

After visiting a General Practitioner (GP) clinic on Jan. 29, she visited Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s (TTSH) emergency department on the next day (Jan. 30).

However, she was discharged when chest x-rays came back negative for pneumonia.

On Feb. 3, she went to Singapore General Hospital (SGH), where she was found to have pneumonia.

She was immediately isolated as she was classified as a suspect case.

Test results showed that she was positive for the coronavirus on Feb. 3.

During the press conference on Feb. 4, Mak said that the 28-year-old woman had been tested for the coronavirus due to the ministry's decision to start screening all pneumonia patients since last week.

About 500 to 600 patients with pneumonia will be tested every week

According to MOH, about 20 per cent of deaths in 2018 were caused by pneumonia, which made it the second largest cause of death in Singapore.

There are about 500 to 600 patients with pneumonia here each week who will need to be tested for the virus.

Mak assured that Singapore is able to keep up with the demand for testing for the coronavirus:

"We don't think the testing capacity is going to be an issue. We in fact have sufficient capacity to test these individuals (and) those who come on as suspected cases further downstream as well."

Tests for the virus can take between two to four hours, but can take over 24 hours to verify the results

The test being used to screen individuals for the coronavirus is a type of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, said Mak.

The PCR test is able to copy a person's DNA multiple times, to allow for the detection of virus.

A video by CBC News explaining the process of how the PCR test is used to detect the coronavirus in Canada can be found here:

Mak said to the press that PCR tests for the coronavirus usually take between two to four hours.

However, the time taken to verify the results can extend this process to over 24 hours.

According to the Straits Times, four private hospitals under the Parkway Pantai group will also test their pneumonia patients for the coronavirus.

Top photo via Pixabay