Singapore’s Ministry of Fitness said in a press release Sunday that COVID-19 transmissions to the bedrooms of foreign workers had “continued to increase,” leading to new orders to quarantine some 20,000 migrant workers.
“This would ensure the protection of staff and the wider network of widespread transmission of these groups,” the ministry said.
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Health officials said they had designated two foreign dormitories as isolation areas, meaning that the thousands of employees living in the two sites will not be able to leave their rooms for 14 days.
One of the bedrooms has about 13,000 employees, while the other has about 6,800 employees inside. Together, the two bedrooms have noticed more than 90 cases of COVID-19 infections.
“Bedroom operators and bedroom staff are reminded that it is vital to maintain the highest hygiene and cleaning criteria to protect their own physical condition and that of others living in the same space,” the ministry said. “Safe distance measures shall be strictly observed”.
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Quarantine staff will continue to receive wages, the ministry said. It also works with all dormitory operators in Singapore to reduce the density of their citizens by moving some of the staff to another home during this period.
But those living in it and other rights teams questioned whether the resolution discriminated against migrant personnel and risked spreading the virus in a very close area.
At least six told the Straits Times that the bedrooms were infested with cockroaches and that the bathrooms were overflowing.
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Amnesty International told the news firm that Singapore’s most recent move “a recipe for disaster.”
“As things stand, quarantine in these dormitories can be discriminatory and amounts to arbitrary deprivation of liberty,” Amnesty researcher Rachel Chhoa-Howard told Reuters.
Economist and former naval intelligence officer John Jordan joins America’s News headquarters.
The quarantine of thousands of people is as Singapore has noticed in local cases of COVID-19, with a record 116 such cases on Sunday.
Singapore will also close from Tuesday, final schools and workplaces deemed not essential for a month.
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On Monday, there were 1,309 cases of COVID-19 in Singapore, with at least six deaths reported, to Johns Hopkins University.
The Associated Press contributed to the report.