Singapore Virus Cases to Fall as Worker Dorms Almost Cleared

(Bloomberg) -- The number of new Covid-19 cases in Singapore is set to fall after the city-state nears clearing its migrant worker dormitories of the virus, paving the way for 90% of these laborers to return to work by the end of the month.

Testing for all workers in the facilities will be completed by tomorrow, the health ministry said in a statement on Thursday. Several standalone blocks that serve as quarantine facilities are the exception and workers there will be tested when their isolation ends, it said.

“We are dealing with the final batch of workers who are in isolation,” Lawrence Wong, the recently appointed Minister for Education who co-chairs the virus taskforce, said at a briefing. “We do expect the number of cases to taper down significantly, because we will have cleared all the workers by then,” he added, referring to the next two weeks.

The milestone comes after months of aggressive testing, isolating infected workers, then caring for the group. More than 50,000 of these workers, or about 15% of the total number in the dorms, had been infected by Covid-19, pushing Singapore’s daily tally of new cases into the hundreds for months and posing the biggest challenge to the country’s national virus response strategy.

Singapore, which was lauded globally for its efforts to contain the outbreak in its early days, had a major setback when infections spread among its migrant worker community housed in close living quarters. The country ramped up its virus response, and now has among Southeast Asia’s highest reported rates of testing. The number of cases in the city-state’s wider community remains relatively small, and have been declining, while fatalities are low.

Foreigners make up about 38% of Singapore’s overall workforce, including foreign domestic workers, according to government figures through the end of last year. They have an outsize share in the construction industry, where three of every four workers is foreign, while foreigners account for about half of Singapore’s manufacturing workforce and 30% in services.

Travel Rules

The government also hinted at changes to its approach as it gradually looks to reopen its borders. It’s possible that travelers from countries with low levels of coronavirus cases, such as Malaysia, may have to isolate for just seven days, instead of the current 14 days, Kenneth Mak, the health ministry’s director of medical services, said at the briefing.

Citizens and permanent residents who leave Singapore under so-called “permitted travel agreements” and green lanes will receive government subsidies to cover medical bills if they require hospitalisation for Covid-19.

That’s in contrast with the current policy, where anyone who left the city-state after March 27 would be liable to pay their own medical bills if they tested positive for the virus.

“Keeping the borders sealed is not a sustainable strategy,” said health minister Gan Kim Yong, adding the country was wary of the uptick in cases in places such as Hong Kong and Vietnam.

Here are more comments from the briefing:

• Despite the progress at the dorms, Mak expressed concern over the workers’ mental health, noting incidents of self-harm and even attempted suicide. “This is a cause of concern and the taskforce continues to look at it to see how to reach out to support migrant workers, who have needs that have to be addressed,” he said.
• The authorities are reviewing the requirement that many employees must work from home following feedback. However, even if that rule is changed, they’d still like to see a “high degree” of people remain working from home.
• Most events, including large gatherings and festivities, should continue to remain virtual for now

The country will probably remain in Phase 2 -- its current status of restarting the economy -- for “some time,” Wong said in July without giving specifics. This phase includes religious services at places of worship and the reopening of cinemas albeit with a limited number of people, as well as allowing retail businesses to resume operations.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.