‘70% to 80%’ of migrant workers in dorms to be cleared of Covid-19 by end-July: Lawrence Wong

SINGAPORE — By the end of July, up to 80 per cent of foreign workers living in dormitories are expected to have recovered from Covid-19, or tested to be free of the infection, National Development Minister Lawrence Wong said on Thursday (June 25).

Speaking at a media briefing organised by the governmental task force handling Singapore’s response to the pandemic, Mr Wong said that through aggressive testing and tracing, some 120,000 migrant workers have so far recovered or have been tested to be free of the virus.

Among them, 80,000 are able to resume work while the rest are due to be moved to appropriate accommodation before they start work, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in a statement on Thursday.

Mr Wong added: “By the end of next month, we expect 70 to 80 per cent of the workers in the dormitories to be cleared — meaning they have recovered or tested to be free of the virus.” MOH said in its statement that this would be equivalent to about 250,000 migrant workers.

“Shortly after that, we will be able to clear all the workers and all the dormitories and they can be expected to return to work after,” Mr Wong said.

On Tuesday, the Manpower Ministry (MOM) said that 31 more dormitories had been cleared of Covid-19.

In total, 163 dormitories and 18 blocks that were housing recovered workers in 11 purpose-built dormitories have so far been cleared.

MOH also said that up to 10,000 tests, involving individual swabs, pooled swabs and serological testing, are conducted for migrant workers daily. Serological testing is to see if a person has antibodies to the virus, meaning he had been infected before.

Dormitories are being prioritised based on their readiness for testing, which depends on factors including how many migrant workers are infected, the length of time since the onset of infection among them and the level of adherence among the workers to safe distancing.