Coronavirus cases reappear at Singapore's largest dormitory (Representational image)
Around 4,800 workers have been issued a stay-home notice at Singapore's largest foreign workers' dormitory after fresh coronavirus emerged there. The Sungei Tengah Lodge dormitory was among the largest COVID-19 clusters in Singapore with over 2,200 confirmed cases before it was declared cleared of the disease by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) last month.
On Sunday, 58 fresh coronavirus cases were confirmed in the dormitory, a day after a new COVID-19 cluster emerged there. All of them are asymptomatic but they have a link to the new cluster, Channel News Asia reported on Monday. Sungei Tengah Lodge is Singapore's biggest purpose-built dormitory, with about 16,000 workers living there.
The MOM, along with the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Building and Construction Authority (BCA), said in a joint statement late on Sunday that the move to issue a stay-home notice was a precautionary measure as the health conditions of the workers were being determined.
The ministry said it will test the workers on stay-home notice over the next few days. Workers who test positive will be sent to community care facilities or hospitals for medical treatment, while those who test negative will be quarantined at centralised facilities to prevent any transmission during the viral incubation period, it said.
The rest of the residents at the lodge are either recently recovered or were not close contacts of confirmed cases. These workers will be allowed to continue working and are not required to be isolated. Workers who are not recently recovered will continue to undergo rostered routine testing, the ministry said.
The BCA said it has issued a safety time-out notice to 20 construction projects where the workers, who tested positive for COVID-19, had been working. This is to allow for disinfection of the affected areas and a review of safe management measures at the work sites, it said. "A stop-work order may then be issued for part or whole of the worksite once the area where the COVID-positive worker and his co-workers operate have been identified," said the BCA.
In recent weeks, COVID-19 cases have been detected in migrant worker dormitories that were previously given the all-clear from the virus. A new cluster was identified on Sunday at Homestay Lodge at 39 Kaki Bukit Avenue 3. The dormitory was previously cleared of COVID-19 by the MOM on August 4.
“The new cases detected in the cleared dormitories demonstrate the importance of ongoing surveillance and testing under rostered routine testing, as well as the need to remain vigilant and adhere to safe management measures," the MOM on Sunday. Singapore reported 87 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, raising the tally to 56,353. Twenty-seven people have died of the virus since the authorities began testing and monitoring the deadly disease in January.
