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From ‘gold standard’ to a coronavirus ‘explosion’: Singapore battles new outbreak
2020-04-14 12:33:10.244 GMT
(LA Times)
Just weeks ago, Singapore was a coronavirus success story, admired for
pinpointing infected patients and isolating their contacts with brisk
efficiency, all while causing minimal disruption to an economy that was the
envy of Asia.
But the prosperous city-state is now battling to control an enormous outbreak
spreading among a population that officials had mostly overlooked: the migrant
workers who form the vast but unseen engine of Singapore’s gleaming economy.
The new wave of infections offers a stark illustration of the continued risks
facing one of the world’s most densely inhabited regions — and of the
coronavirus’ often disproportionate toll on the poor and marginalized.
COVID-19 cases in Singapore have tripled since the start of the month to
nearly 3,000, with most of the new infections found in laborers from India,
Bangladesh and other countries who live in crowded, airless dormitories on the
edges of the modern, manicured city-state they’ve helped build.
The dormitories — where workers often sleep 20 to a room in bunk beds, share
kitchens and bathrooms, and enjoy hardly any personal space — have allowed
transmission of the coronavirus to explode. Singapore’s government said
Tuesday it had quarantined eight dorms and would lock down dozens of others,
effectively confining 200,000 workers to their rooms as authorities ramp up
testing and isolate the infected.
“People are scared,” said Kiron, a 35-year-old construction worker from
Bangladesh who lives in one of the dorms. He asked that his full name be
withheld to protect his job. “You don’t know if you will be the next one to
get sick.”
After avoiding a lockdown for months, and after Harvard researchers had
praised Singapore as the “gold standard” in detecting new infections, the
government last week closed schools and nonessential businesses and ordered
residents to shelter indoors as much as possible. Infections had already begun
to rise, and in recent days they’ve soared: On Monday, Singapore recorded an
all-time high of 386 new COVID-19 cases, nearly all among migrant workers in
dorms.
The crisis has laid bare the dizzyingly unequal conditions endured by
Singapore’s army of 1 million imported, low-wage laborers who — not unlike
farmworkers in California or construction crews in the Persian Gulf — make up
a largely invisible underclass in this wealthy nation of 5.6 million.
“Singapore’s entire economic model is to reap the benefits of the cheap labor
of the Third World in order to create our so-called First World economy,” said
Alex Au, vice president of Transient Workers Count Too, an advocacy group that
works on migrant labor issues.
“It worked fine when you could completely segregate them from Singapore
society and house them in dormitories in far-out parts of the city. The only
problem is a virus comes along that does not respect this apartheid-type of
segregation, and then you have an explosion.”
Hired on short-term contracts with no chance at long-term residency or
citizenship, about 500,000 migrants, mostly from South Asian countries, work
on construction sites, assembly lines and shipyards. Most earn about $500 per
month, according to activists, compared to more than $3,200 for the average
Singaporean.
About 200,000 live in 43 purpose-built dormitories on the outskirts of the
city, which is slightly larger than the San Fernando Valley. One of those
dorms now has nearly coronavirus 600 cases, one-fifth of the country total.
“They’re not often seen, or even if they are — when they’re cleaning our
trash, building our buildings, gardening our parks — they’re kind of
invisible,” said Laavanya Kathiravelu, an assistant professor at Singapore’s
Nanyang Technological University who studies migrant labor. “When something
like this happens, unfortunately, that’s when they become visible.”
Singaporeans who returned from abroad last month were placed in 14-day
isolation at luxury resorts, where rooms start at $300 a night, on the
government’s dime. Before the lockdown, downtown office workers were subjected
to strict temperature checks and rode up elevators whose buttons were sprayed
with disinfectant multiple times a day.
But the situation for migrant workers is far different.
Last Friday, three days after the government lockdown began but well after the
surge in infections among migrant workers, Rubel Arnab, a 30-year-old
construction worker from Bangladesh, visited a dormitory in eastern Singapore
to distribute masks and hand sanitizer donated by a local charity.
He found no one screening workers’ or visitors’ temperatures, and none of the
leaflets promoting hygiene that are everywhere in the rest of Singapore. In
one room filled with 10 bunk beds and a couple of small fans bolted to the
roof, he found a dozen men sitting on the floor.
“There is no space,” Arnab said. “If one person is infected in the room, that
means 19 others are going to be infected. Unless you reduce the numbers, there
is no hope that a virus in the dormitories can be controlled.”
Singapore is now rushing to create distancing in the dorms. Officials said
Tuesday they had moved 7,000 healthy workers into other temporary housing,
including floating accommodation typically used by workers in offshore
industries, vacant public housing blocks and temporary bunks in parking
structures.
There were warning signs before the new outbreak. On Feb. 10, after a
Bangladeshi laborer became the first to be infected with the virus, lawyer
Dipa Swaminathan, founder of It’s Raining Raincoats, an initiative that works
with migrants, wrote a Facebook post warning that “the spread among them could
be rapid, given the cramped conditions in which they live, work and are
transported.”
Health officials said the man had visited Mustafa Center, a giant shopping
complex in Singapore’s Little India district that is popular with foreign
workers.
But as recently as two weeks ago, shoppers were going in and out of the
building without temperature checks, and few employees were seen wearing
masks. On Monday, the government said 83 infections had been linked to Mustafa
Center.
In a national address last week, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong took the rare
step of speaking directly to foreign workers and their families, saying that
Singaporeans “appreciate the work and contribution of your sons, fathers and
husbands” and “will do our best to take care of their health, livelihood and
welfare here and to let them go home safe and sound to you.”
Lee promised that their salaries would be paid as usual and that the
government would pay for treatment if they were infected.
But there is no plan, as of now, to house them in any of the mostly empty
hotels across the city that were built with migrant labor.
“There is a certain amount of irony and sadness in that,” Swaminathan said.
“Every beautiful condo, every plush hotel is built by them, and ironically now
we are struggling to find space to segregate them while this virus rages
through this community.”
-0- Apr/14/2020 12:33 GMT
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weehingthong 
The eternal divide between the Morlocks and the Eloi.