We’ve hit the 3,000 mark today.
And might I remind you, on 1 March 2020, we have only 106 cases.
Singapore has become a different Singapore today, and while a majority of them are from foreign worker dormitories, the situation, as the Health Minister said, remains “critical”.
Here’s today’s announcement.
334 New COVID-19 Cases in S’pore Today (14 Apr)
Out of the 334 cases, none of them are imported.
122 are still unlinked, with 24 of them Singaporeans and 98 of them long-term pass holders, with a large majority likely from foreign worker dormitories. Contact tracing for these unlinked cases are still ongoing.
Health Ministry’s director of medical services, Associate Professor Kenneth Mak, said that “out of the proportion that are as yet unlinked, you will find that over the next few days that number whittles down progressively as we link them to existing clusters.”
The remaining 189 of them are linked to known clusters.
Full details are not revealed yet as this is based on a press conference set up today and not from the daily media release from MOH, so it’s unknown if there are any new clusters yet.
Circuit Breaker Measures Are Taken Seriously But Situation Remains Critical
According to Health Minister Gan Kim Yong, by and large, Singaporeans are taking circuit breaker measures seriously, but of course we can’t get complacent.
He added, “We remain in a critical situation, the number of cases has been increasing.”
With so many cases linked to foreign worker dormitories, the authorities are doing more to protect the foreign workers.
Operation to Improve Dormitories
Other than deploying teams to each of the 43 dormitories in Singapore to ensure that the living conditions are okay with safe distancing measures, the authorities plan to set up medical posts in all the dormitories—just like those that are already set up in the 8 dormitories that are gazetted as isolation areas.
SAF’s Chief Guards Officer Seet Uei Lim, who’s part of a task force set up to combat the fight against COVID-19 in dormitories, “Now, our focus is on healthcare protection, and soon we will expand our healthcare capacity. The end state is to return to normalcy, ensure that dormitories can take care of our foreign friend.”
The medical posts would include medical workers and GPs.
So far, no mention of whether any Medic NSmen would be activated lah.
As of now, over 7,000 healthy foreign workers who used to live in dormitories and worked in essential services have been relocated to 18 temporary housing locations, such as facilities that fall under the Ministry of Defence (Mindef), Ministry of Home Affairs, Ministry of Education and Sports Singapore.
You can do your part as a responsible citizen through helping out in contact tracing by downloading the TraceTogether app.
In the meantime, keep yourself updated by bookmarking MOH’s website here and registering for the Gov.sg’s WhatsApp service here.
Or if you’re young, you can join Gov.sg’s Telegram channel and do remember to join the Goody Feed Telegram channel, too.