Speaking in Parliament yesterday, Health Minister Gan Kim Yong said the number of foreign workers infected is not important and the easing of circuit breaker measures will require only “community cases”.
“For Singapore to lift COVID-19 circuit breaker measures, the number of community cases daily should fall to zero or single digits over a sustained period of time.”
The PAP Minister indicated that he does not consider foreign workers as “local cases”. This means the circuit breaker measures may be lifted even when there are hundreds of daily new cases involving foreign workers.
Singapore has again posted exceedingly dangerous new cases today, and on track to see its 20,000th case within the next couple of days. 632 new cases were reported today with a total of 19,410 confirmed cases.
The Health Ministry tried to fudge the figures, by claiming that only 9 new cases are Singaporeans and permanent residents. Using percentages to play down the seriousness of the widespread infection, the Ministry of Health said the chances of getting the coronavirus is very low:
“Just over 5 per cent, or 16,383, of the 323,000 migrant workers living in dorms have tested positive for the virus as of Monday. The virus prevalence rate for work permit holders not living in dorms remains constant at 0.09 per cent, or 577 people diagnosed out of 664,000 of these work permit holders. The rate for Singaporeans, permanent residents and other pass holders is 0.03 per cent, or 1,229 of about 4.7 million here.”