New Covid-19 Cases Seen At Cleared Migrant Worker Dorms, MOM Sets Up More Safeguards

Authorities Monitor Dorms As New Covid-19 Cases From Cleared Workers Detected

Authorities have completed testing of all migrant workers in dormitories, but they’ll continue to test them every 14 days.

In order to prevent another outbreak, there’ll be more safeguards beyond the usual safe management guidelines.

Part of the reason is that there have been reports of new Covid-19 cases among workers even in cleared dormitories.

On Tuesday (11 Aug), the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and Interagency Task Force (ITF) announced a multi-layered approach to make sure workers can go back to work safely.

Tests every 14 days, increased monitoring

In the statement, MOM outlined their multiple layers of safeguards.

All workers will have to take their temperature twice daily and report if they have any symptoms of acute respiratory illness.

Those in ‘higher risk’ settings will be tested routinely every 14 days.

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Workers in higher risk settings include the following:

• Dormitory workers
• Onsite workers at:
  – Construction sector
  – Marine sector
  – Process sector

However, those who were infected and recovered from Covid-19 won’t need to be tested for 180 days.

Monitoring wastewater of high risk dorms for Covid-19 traces

Authorities will monitor wastewater for traces of Covid-19 in higher risk dormitories. This has been done in other countries to check for prevalence of the virus in the area.

If there are higher numbers of workers reporting sick at medical posts, authorities will take this as possible indication of infections.

At potential sign of infection, authorities will isolate and quarantine all workers within the block.

Source

They’ll also conduct testing on everyone to see if the virus has spread further.

Hopefully safeguards are sufficient

The first outbreak in the dorms was not anticipated, despite there being hundreds of thousands of workers sharing the areas.

After months of testing, isolating and quarantining, all dorms are now cleared.

However, another outbreak might occur if we get complacent, especially because there are new cases in cleared dorms. The authorities recognise this, and are monitoring the situation closely.

Hopefully, with the increased safeguards, the workers can get back to work safely and prevent a resurgence in cases.

Featured image adapted from Facebook.