Via Channel NewsAsia: ‘Dedicated strategy’ to break COVID-19 spread in dormitories, including housing healthy workers in army camps. Excerpt:
SINGAPORE: Foreign workers who are not sick and working in essential services will be housed separately, and more measures will be enforced to maintain hygiene and food supplies in dormitories, announced Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong on Thursday (Apr 9).
Military camps, Changi Exhibition Centre, vacant HDB flats and offshore floating lodgings have been identified as accommodation as part of efforts to temporarily house healthy essential workers separately from those quarantined in dormitories.
More than 5,000 workers have already moved out to army camps and vacant HDB blocks such as those at Tanjong Pagar and Jurong, Mr Wong noted, adding that capacity at these sites is in the “thousands”.
Offshore accommodation that typically houses offshore and marine workers will also be ready in a few days, Mr Wong said. Each of the “floating hotels” can typically take 500 workers.
“The key for all of these alternative venues, it’s not just a place to stay, but you need toilets, you need showering facilities,” he said.
Workers are being tested "aggressively” to separate those who are infected or suspected cases from those who are healthy in order to reduce the number of workers in each dorm and make the situation more manageable, Mr Wong added.
This comes as the number of COVID-19 cases in foreign worker dormitories has surged, with clusters emerging in nine dormitories across Singapore. The cluster at S11 Dormitory @ Punggol is the largest in Singapore, with 283 confirmed cases as of Apr 9.
Four dormitories housing 50,000 workers in total have been declared as isolation areas so far, meaning that the workers will not be allowed to leave their rooms for 14 days.
