Singapore’s health ministry on Wednesday reported no new cases of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) from the local transmission, days after the government approved Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. However, coronavirus infection among migrant workers has been a matter of concern as the latest data showed nearly half of them have been infected with Covid-19 in the past nine months.
The data published by the health ministry revealed that more than 152,000 migrant workers, out of 320,000, who live in dormitories, have been infected. As of December 13, more than 54,000 dormitory dwelling migrant workers tested positive for Covid-19 via a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test, while 98,289 migrant workers were found infected in serology tests. The normal PCR coronavirus tests detect whether a person currently has the virus and the serology tests find out whether a person has had it in the past.
The health ministry said in a statement that by August, all foreign workers living in dormitories have been tested for the virus at least once. The vast majority of the Covid-19 cases occurred in dormitories of migrant workers, where the coronavirus spread quickly due to their communal living arrangements. The ministry added that the health and social distancing measures turned out to be inadequate, given the highly infectious nature of the virus.
“We acted swiftly and decisively to stabilise the situation in the dormitories. Working closely with dormitory operators, employers, the medical community, NGOs and other community groups, we contained the outbreak and cleared the dormitories of the virus,” the ministry stated.
According to the latest data, there were 25 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admissions amongst migrant workers living in dormitories, and two deaths due to the contagious disease. The ministry said that the morbidity and mortality rate “among our migrant workers has been very low”, despite the scale of the pandemic. It also added that almost all of them have since also been cleared to resume work safely. But the migrant labourers from South Asia still face restrictions on their movement which will only be gradually lifted next year, according to a BBC report.
