342 workers placed in isolation after positive Covid-19 case in Tuas dormitory

Singapore — A total of 342 foreign workers who live in a block in Space@Tuas have been moved to a government quarantine facility following the detection of a new Covid-19 infection in the dormitory.

The Ministry of Manpower announced this on Thursday (Oct 1). The new case had been discovered on Monday during rostered routine testing.

According to the ministry’s preliminary assessment, “the physical segregation measures to prevent workers across two different blocks within the dormitory from intermixing could have been breached”, which means that some of the workers may have been mingling with others.

As a precautionary measure, a Stay Home Notice (SHN) was immediately issued to the workers residing in the two blocks to ensure there was no further spread of infection.

But, when the investigation concluded, “it was established that it was unlikely for workers from different blocks to have intermixed”, and therefore the SHN was lifted for the unaffected block.

The ministry announced, however, that safe living measures had not been strictly implemented in the block where the worker who tested positive lives. Due to this, 342 workers living in this block, who work for 27 different employers, have been deemed as at-risk for the infection and, therefore, put into 14 days of quarantine.

The ministry also made an appeal for compliance with strict safe living measures within the dormitories to dormitory operators, employers and workers, to limit and minimise the need for isolating workers, and so that entire blocks need not be given SHNs.

It stated: “All stakeholders must play their part:

1. 1. Dormitory operators must ensure that Safe Living measures remain effective.
   2. Workers must continue to strictly comply with Safe Living measures and remain within their respective residential zones.
   3. Employers should ensure that their workers adhere strictly to Safe Living measures in their dormitories and consistently undergo the RRT.”

All worker dormitories, including Space@Tuas, had been cleared of the infection last August, but infection clusters have shown up over the past weeks.

To date, Singapore has had a total of 57,896 Covid-19 cases, including the 10 new cases reported on (Friday (Oct 2). Of the new cases, one is a community case and five are imported cases “who had all been placed on Stay-Home Notice upon arrival in Singapore”, said the Ministry of Health. /TISG

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