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Singapore reported 942 new cases of coronavirus on Saturday, a one-day high for the small city-state that brought its total number of infections to 5,992, including 10 deaths.
The sharp one-day rise in the small city-state of nearly six million people is the highest seen in Southeast Asia.
ORE HUIYING / GETTY IMAGES
A security guard checks the temperature of a migrant worker before leaving a factory-converted bedroom.
The number of cases in Singapore has more than doubled in the past week amid an explosion of infections among foreign workers staying in crowded dormitories. This group now represents around 60 percent of Singapore’s cases.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said Saturday that it will take time to break the transmission chain in the bedrooms. He wrote on Facebook that the vast majority of cases among migrant workers were mild, since the workers are young.
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Although dormitory cases are expected to continue to rise amid ongoing virus testing, Lee said the government is building its health care and isolation facilities to handle the cargo.
ORE HUIYING / GETTY IMAGES
Migrant workers line up outside a bedroom.
More than 200,000 migrant workers from Bangladesh, India and other Asian countries live in dormitories in Singapore that house up to 20 people per room with shared facilities. Tens of thousands of workers have been quarantined in their bedrooms, while some have been moved to safer places to reduce overcrowding.
Lee said there were early signs that the partial closure of Singapore until May 4 is helping to reduce the number of new cases. But he said the government is concerned about hidden cases circulating in the population and urged citizens to do their part.
