SINGAPORE (Jun 1): Some 40,000 migrant workers who lived in dormitories have been cleared of the coronavirus and given the green light to return to work.
Of these, 12,000 are essential workers who have previously moved out to short-term accommodation sites such as floatels and vacant Housing Development Board (HDB) flats, noted Manpower Minister Josephine Teo at a press conference on Monday.
Another 20,000 over workers have recovered from the coronavirus and have been rehoused into different temporary sites.
The remaining 8,000 workers are dormitory residents who have either tested negative for Covid-19 or recovered patients who have returned to living with their fellow workers.
Meanwhile, the first batch of 60 dormitories – including three Purpose-Built Dormitories as well as 57 factory-converted dormitories and temporary construction quarters – will be given a cleared status on Tuesday. It also marks the first day post-circuit breaker.
"What does it mean to say a dorm has been cleared?" It means every block in a dorm has been cleared and every resident in those blocks has been cleared of Covid-19 infection,” Teo elaborated.
She noted that this has been enabled through medical support such as systematic and regular testing, enhanced health surveillance to enable early detection of any infection - and in the case of the cleared workers, re-infections.
A new measure rolled out is an access code on the SG Workpass app. Here, workers will need a ‘green status’ on their app before they can resume work.
Aside from this, greater discipline in the workers’ living must be adopted, to further prevent re-infections, Teo said.
In this vein, workers have been split into cohorts based on the projects they are working on. Dormitories will do their part by ensuring safe distancing and safe management practices such as erecting barriers between blocks to prevent mixing of residents.
Said Teo, “We still have to be mindful that in spite of all these measures, the risk of reinfections for the workers individually and the risk of clusters forming remains”.
"We cannot assume that with these measures, there will be no reinfections. The risk of infection remains there. What we therefore need to layer on is a rigorous system to test the workers, and that is what we are working on."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong took to Facebook on Monday to urge everyone to remain cautious and vigilant as Singapore rolls back some circuit breaker measures.
“Dealing with Covid-19 is a marathon, not a sprint,” he said as he urged Singaporeans to continue their practice of safe distancing, wearing masks when outdoors, washing hands frequently and avoiding crowds and gatherings.
"If we all do this, then life can go on more or less normally after the circuit breaker. We don’t want Covid-19 cases to spike up again and be forced to tighten once more,” he stressed.
"Even after a vaccine is found, everything will not simply go back to the way it was before. Covid-19 has exposed how vulnerable our way of life is. But it has also given us the opportunity to prove our mettle, and come back stronger”.
