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Despite the fact that the number of Covid-19 infections in foreign workers’ dormitories continues to rise, the situation is better than originally expected, infectious disease expert Alex Cook said.
“When we modeled the number of cases in foreign worker dorms in the initial period, they had all the classic characteristics of exponential growth,” said associate professor Cook on The Straits Times talk show The Big Story.
“The models suggested it was almost out of control, without any mitigation efforts,” he said yesterday.
“What we’ve been seeing in the last few weeks is that the number of cases is consistently less actually than the models say it should have been.”
Professor Cook, vice dean for research at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore, said there were two ways to interpret this.
“It could be pessimistic and say that we cannot detect all cases due to lack of capacity,” he said.
“But you can also be optimistic and say it appears that because we are making efforts to separate infected workers from those who are not, that should tip the curve downward.”
This means that Singapore is reducing the number of new infections, but potentially extending them for longer, Professor Cook added.
Covid-19 cases involving foreign workers staying in dormitories have been on the rise since the beginning of last month. Such cases now represent nearly 23,000 of the 25,346 confirmed infections in Singapore.
On Tuesday, National Development Minister Lawrence Wong said that so far 32,000 of the 323,000 foreign workers who remain in dormitories have been examined.
He said about 3,000 tests are done in the dorms every day, and that number is expected to increase in the coming weeks.
Mr. Wong added that all workers staying in the dorms will eventually be screened for Covid-19 to make sure they are free of the virus before resuming work.
Professor Cook said yesterday that there are generally signs suggesting that authorities are beginning to control the outbreak of coronavirus in bedrooms.
But he warned that it is still “not clear” what will happen in the coming weeks.
“Exactly how long those outbreaks will last, we have no idea,” he said.
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