Speaker of Parliament Tan Chuan-Jin said that if university hostels remained open, "you would expect a massive outbreak to occur as well" (Conditions in dorms not main reason for clusters, says Tan Chuan-Jin, May 8).

He is right. The hostels at the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University and Singapore University of Technology and Design house up to six students per hostel unit.

Although that is 50 per cent of the capacity of a typical foreign worker dormitory room, the close contact risk is still there.

More importantly, these students share common toilets with other hostel units, further exposing them to the risk of infection.

The universities should learn from what is happening at the foreign worker dormitories, and make adjustments to their student hostels to prevent the potential spread of Covid-19 when students return en masse.

Ethan Chan Eng Ann