SINGAPORE - A fifth foreign worker dormitory is now an isolation area, with Covid-19 cases at such sites continuing to rise rapidly.
In a notice in the Government Gazette on Thursday night (April 9), Health Minister Gan Kim Yong declared the Tampines Dormitory as an isolation area under the Infectious Diseases Act to prevent the spread or possible outbreak of coronavirus infections.
The move took effect from 11.59pm on Thursday.
The dormitory is located at 2 Tampines Place.
There were 17 new coronavirus cases confirmed on Thursday that were linked to the dormitory, making a total of 38 cases in the cluster.
Four other dormitories - Sungei Tengah Lodge, S11 Dormitory @ Punggol, Westlite Toh Guan and Toh Guan dormitory - have also been declared as isolation areas. These means that workers at these lodgings have to be quarantined in their rooms for 14 days.
Singapore saw a sharp spike of 287 coronavirus cases on Thursday, with about 70 per cent linked to foreign worker dormitories.
The S11 Dormitory cluster swelled with an additional 166 new cases, making it the largest cluster here with 283 cases - close to 15 per cent of all cases in Singapore.
Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean is now advising the multi-ministry task force on handling the Covid-19 situation in foreign worker dormitories, with the police and Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) involved in operations there.
To cut the chain of transmission in dormitories, thousands of foreign workers who are healthy - especially those working in essential services - will be moved to army camps, floating hotels and vacant Housing Board blocks.
Preliminary investigations have linked the cluster at Mustafa Centre with clusters at the construction site at Project Glory and five dormitories.
The Health Ministry's director of medical services Kenneth Mak said at a press conference on Thursday that the ministry believes that foreign workers had visited Mustafa Centre, where some employees had fallen ill, and got infected.
They then transmitted the infection to their coworkers, who subsequently infected others at their dormitories.
Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong, who co-chairs the Covid-19 task force, said: "All of us have to be mentally prepared that the numbers in the foreign worker dormitories will continue to rise in the coming days and perhaps even in the coming week or so, this will happen before they start to stabilise.
"But we do have a comprehensive strategy and measures are in place, and the agencies are now working round the clock to execute and implement them."
Mr Wong, who noted that there will still be foreign workers working in the public in services such as cleaning, also urged the public not to be prejudiced against them.
"It's not because of a foreign worker being inherently of higher risk - the risk of infection for the rest of us in the population is the same, regardless of nationality regardless of race," he said.
"Therefore, whether it's local or foreigner, all of us outside of the dormitory have to strictly comply with all the circuit breaker measures that we have been talking about."
