Singapore Was a Coronavirus Success Story —Until an Outbreak Showed How Vulnerable Workers Can Fall Through the Cracks

Since mid-March, Asadul Alam Asif has watched nervously as Singapore reported more and more COVID-19 cases in migrant workers’ dormitories like the one where he lives. The 28-year-old Bangladeshi technician counted himself lucky each day that nobody was infected in his housing block, where around 1,900 workers reside in cramped conditions that make social distancing impossible. To relieve congestion, Asif’s company rehoused some people, which left half of the 16 bunk-beds in his small room empty. But then, one day last week, seven people in Asif’s dorm tested positive. He received a text message instructing all residents on the fifth and sixth floors—including him—not to leave their rooms. “All of us slept very late that night, like 1 or 2 a.m.,” he told TIME by phone. “We were all so worried.” Asif is one of the more than 200,000 foreign workers living in Singapore’s dormitories, where often 10 to 20 men are packed into a single room. Built to house the workers who power the construction, cleaning and other key industries, these utilitarian complexes on the city-state’s periphery have become hives of infection, revealing a blind spot in Singapore’s previously vaunted coronavirus response. As of April 28, these dorms were home to 85% of Singapore’s 14,951 cases. “The dormitories were like a time bomb waiting to explode,” Singapore lawyer Tommy Koh wrote in a widely circulated Faceb...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 feature News Desk overnight Source Type: news