558 new COVID-19 cases in Singapore are from dormitorries used by foreigners

Singapore on Friday said that 558 new coronavirus cases out of 623 reported on Friday were from dormitories used for foreign workers.

"A total of 558 new cases are from foreign worker dormitories, while 37 are work permit holders residing outside dormitories," said Singapore's Health Ministry.

total number of coronavirus infections in country w stands at 5,050, with 11 deaths.

National Development Minister Lawrence Wong has warned Singaporeans, saying a "long fight" with COVID-19 may last "many more months, and likely beyond end of year".

"We have to be prepared for future waves of infection and we have to steel ourselves for a long fight," he said in a Facebook post on Friday.

Minister Wong, who is part of Muti-ministry Task Force to combat COVID-19, said number of cases among foreign workers should be expected to remain high as authorities continue to actively test and isolate workers who caught coronavirus.

" vast majority of workers are young, and y tend to have very mild cough/cold symptoms that are t picked up by temperature taking alone.

"So, teams are working doubly hard to sweep through dorms and test workers, and this is also reason why we are seeing such high reported cases every day," he said in a Facebook post on Friday.

"We have to expect numbers to remain high for some time as we continue this effort to swab, test and isolate workers," he ded.

Of new cases anunced on Friday, 69 per cent are linked to previously identified clusters while rest are pending contact tracing.

Twenty-seven cases reported on Friday were local from community.

Twenty-two of 2,113 confirmed cases in hospital are in critical condition in intensive care unit. Most of rest are stable or improving.

A total of 2,218 cases who are clinically well but still test positive for COVID-19 are isolated and cared for at community facilities.

Twenty-five more patients have been discharged from hospitals or community isolation facilities on Friday.

In all, 708 have fully recovered from infection and have been discharged.

Since measures to contain spre of dely disease, "circuit breaker", was implemented on Apr 7, number of new cases in community has decreased, "from an aver of 40 cases per day in week before, to an aver of 32 per day in past week", ministry said.

" circuit breaker measures appear to have helped, but we still have to monitor carefully numbers over next few days," it said.

Ministry has been detecting new cases by testing "a small sample of patients at our primary care facilities" for COVID-19 as part of an ongoing surveillance programme.

This indicates presence of undetected cases in community, Ministry ded.