SINGAPORE — Singapore has started active case-finding within the foreign worker population residing in dormitories, said a senior Ministry of Health official on .
National Development Minister and taskforce co-chair Lawrence Wong explained that Singapore is dealing with two separate infections – one where numbers are rising sharply within foreign worker dorms and another where numbers are currently more stable in the general population. The government, therefore, has to actively intervene in this “very major and urgent issue” in a two-part strategy, said Wong.
Such medical posts will be first deployed at critical sites, but eventually they will be scaled up to cater to some 200,000 workers spread across all 43 dorms here. “We have a responsibility for these foreign workers, who have come all the way here at considerable expense to make a living in Singapore, said Wong.
Lastly, dedicated sick bays must be scaled up to appropriately take care of those who require isolation, while and after going through the period of assessment.Story continues“Now, we have to step in and help the dormitory operators, because it is an enormous task to be able to implement these changes in a short time.”
“By Tuesday, we had three FAST teams working with dorm operators. By Wednesday, we had put together 43 FAST teams, matching them with dorm operators,” said Teo. The next step would be to replicate what was found to have worked to all dorms that have yet to be gazetted as isolation areas, as well as thin resident populations in them out to ensure that safe distancing measures could be rolled out.