City-state’s legions of foreign workers have been hard hit by a fast new surge of Covid-19 cases
With a partial lockdown in effect, Singapore is grappling to contain its worsening Covid-19 outbreak amid a nearly threefold rise in cases since April 1. As stricter penalties for non-compliance come into force, the health crisis has brought the plight of the country’s badly-affected foreign worker community into sharper focus.
A single-day record high of 386 new cases was reported on Monday (April 13), along with the ninth causality to perish in the city-state since the onset of the epidemic. The island-state recorded 2,918 Covid cases as of April 13, with the majority of recent infections affecting foreign worker dormitories across the island republic.
Singapore’s largest cluster, the S11 Dormitory in Punggol, houses some 13,000 workers and has 586 cases. There are 43 foreign worker dormitories in the city-state, where some 200,000 low-wage work-permit holders mostly from South Asia reside. Eight dormitories have so far been sealed off and gazetted by authorities as “isolation areas.”
Local transmission is occurring on a smaller scale in Singapore’s wider community with apparent links to an earlier “second wave” spike in imported cases carried by residents returning from contagion-hit countries such as the United States, Britain and neighboring Malaysia.
Read the full story at Asia Times.
With a partial lockdown in effect, Singapore is grappling to contain its worsening Covid-19 outbreak amid a nearly threefold rise in cases since April 1. As stricter penalties for non-compliance come into force, the health crisis has brought the plight of the country’s badly-affected foreign worker community into sharper focus.
A single-day record high of 386 new cases was reported on Monday (April 13), along with the ninth causality to perish in the city-state since the onset of the epidemic. The island-state recorded 2,918 Covid cases as of April 13, with the majority of recent infections affecting foreign worker dormitories across the island republic.
Singapore’s largest cluster, the S11 Dormitory in Punggol, houses some 13,000 workers and has 586 cases. There are 43 foreign worker dormitories in the city-state, where some 200,000 low-wage work-permit holders mostly from South Asia reside. Eight dormitories have so far been sealed off and gazetted by authorities as “isolation areas.”
Local transmission is occurring on a smaller scale in Singapore’s wider community with apparent links to an earlier “second wave” spike in imported cases carried by residents returning from contagion-hit countries such as the United States, Britain and neighboring Malaysia.
Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.
