A total of 342 migrant workers staying in a Tuas dormitory will serve a 14-day quarantine after a Covid-19 case was detected in their block.
All of them were moved from the Space @ Tuas dorm to a government quarantine facility after the confirmed Covid-19 case was detected on Monday, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said yesterday.
The ministry said that the new case was discovered through its rostered routine testing.
As a precautionary measure, a stay-home notice was issued to all workers staying in two dormitory blocks in Space @ Tuas.
MOM said that this precautionary measure was taken after its preliminary assessment found that physical segregation measures meant to keep workers across the two blocks from intermixing appeared to have been breached.
Further investigations, however, established that it was unlikely workers from different blocks had intermixed.
Therefore, the stay-home notices for the unaffected block were rescinded.
However, as safe living measures had not been strictly enforced in the block that the confirmed Covid-19 patient stayed in, 342 residents there - who work for 27 employers - had to be quarantined.
On Aug 19, MOM had declared all dorms clear of Covid-19, including the standalone blocks in purpose-built dormitories that served as isolation or quarantine facilities.
However, coronavirus clusters continued to emerge, with new dorm clusters announced for three consecutive days from Aug 22 to 24.
This is because many of the workers have not been exposed and therefore remain susceptible to the virus, Second Minister for Manpower Tan See Leng explained on Sept 9.
MOM reminded all dorm ope-rators, employers and workers to work together to comply with strict safe living measures within dorms.
Doing so would limit quarantine measures to affected workers staying on the same level or section, instead of all dorm residents in the entire block, the ministry added.
"It is only with the collective efforts of all parties that our migrant workers can remain safe and healthy and our businesses face minimal disruptions to their operations," the ministry said.
