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SINGAPORE – It may take a few weeks for the number of infections in workers’ bedrooms to drop enough to indicate that the Covid-19 outbreak is under control in those rooms, said the chief health scientist at the Ministry of Health, Professor Tan Chorh Chuan.
The number of new infections should start to decline when most infected cases are identified and removed, he told The Straits Times executive editor Sumiko Tan in an exclusive interview in Thursday’s (April 30) special episode of The Big Story.
But even after Singapore reaches that point, not all dorms that have been quarantined will reopen at the same time, as some are more affected than others, Professor Tan said.
Instead, it will be a situation where workers who have been tested and are virus free can return to work and the community. They will be housed separately from those who could be exposed or infected.
Subsequently, other dorms or parts of the dorms could gradually lift their quarantine once authorities are certain there is no more active transmission in the dorms, Professor Tan added.
“Inside dorms that don’t have many cases, as we evaluate workers and clean them, some dorms or some parts of the dorms may gradually reopen,” said Professor Tan.
Some workers in less-affected dormitories may also return to work and return to the community sooner, if they have tested negative for the virus and if authorities trust they are not infectious, he added.
But this will take longer in bedrooms with more cases, since the case load and transmission rate are higher.
“The test will have to be done again for many of the residents in these dormitories to determine their infection status,” said Professor Tan.
It should be safe for workers who have been exposed to the virus but are no longer infectious to return to work and the community, he added.
A total of 38 of the 43 specially designed large bedrooms in Singapore now have Covid-19 groups, while there are at least 20 smaller factory-converted bedrooms with groups.
The largest group, the S11 bedroom in Punggol, has more than 2,400 boxes. Other bedrooms have groups ranging from less than 20 cases to around 900 cases.
Earlier this month, Human Resources Minister Josephine Teo said that all foreign workers currently living in dormitories should stop coming and going from April 21 to May 4, including work.
Dorms with Covid-19 groups had also been quarantined in early April.
For now, Singapore is still seeing “a large number” of Covid-19 cases due to active case finding, Professor Tan said.
For example, there is a “very low threshold” for performing diagnostic swab tests for people with respiratory symptoms. Systematic testing operations are also underway in some of the dormitories.
“We are actively trying to find cases so we can isolate them and thus reduce the extent of the spread.” he said. “So we expect the numbers to continue to increase due to active tracking.”
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