{"id":12355,"date":"2020-04-20T16:13:29","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T20:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/?p=12355"},"modified":"2020-05-20T19:03:23","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T23:03:23","slug":"singapore-sees-surge-in-covid-19-cases-now-has-highest-number-in-southeast-asia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/singapore-sees-surge-in-covid-19-cases-now-has-highest-number-in-southeast-asia\/","title":{"rendered":"Singapore Sees Surge in COVID-19 Cases, Now Has Highest Number In Southeast Asia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n A safe-distancing enforcement officer wearing a red armband checks his phone at a food court in Singapore on Saturday. The officers have been deployed to ensure people maintain distance from one another, as Singapore grapples with a spike in coronavirus cases.<\/p>\n

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YK Chan\/AP<\/p>\n

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YK Chan\/AP<\/p>\n

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A safe-distancing enforcement officer wearing a red armband checks his phone at a food court in Singapore on Saturday. The officers have been deployed to ensure people maintain distance from one another, as Singapore grapples with a spike in coronavirus cases.<\/p>\n

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YK Chan\/AP<\/p>\n

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Singapore today recorded 1,426 new COVID-19 infections, bringing its total to more than 8,000 in a population of nearly 6 million people. It now has the highest number of reported cases in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

A little over a month ago, the prosperous city-state won praise as a model of how to control the spread of the virus<\/a> without lockdowns. Mass testing, quick hospitalization of those infected, aggressive tracing and quarantining of those in contact with infected people helped keep numbers down.<\/p>\n

In mid-March, infections started increasing. The city responded by tightening entry restrictions and imposed a partial lockdown and strict edicts<\/a> on social distancing.<\/p>\n

While the number of infections among Singaporean citizens or residents remains low, there has been a surge in transmission among foreign workers over the past two weeks.<\/p>\n

Last week, authorities announced they would put all dormitories housing foreign workers \u2014 some 300,000 people, mostly from Bangladesh, China and India \u2014 under near-total lockdown.<\/a> In the days that followed, Singapore reported 728 new cases \u2014almost all of them migrant workers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend, the numbers kept climbing. Among the cases reported Monday, 18 are Singaporeans or permanent residents, <\/a>according to Reuters.<\/p>\n

Social distancing is a challenge<\/a> in the dorms, which can sometimes jam more than a dozen men per room, sharing a kitchen and toilet.<\/p>\n

In a Facebook post, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote that Singapore needs time to “break the chain of transmission”<\/a> in the dorms. “Fortunately, the vast majority of the cases are mild, because the workers are young,” he wrote.<\/p>\n

Singapore has recorded 11 deaths from COVID-19 so far, fewer than almost every other Southeast Asian country, except Laos and Vietnam.<\/p>\n

In one of the wealthiest per-capita nations in the world<\/a>, many of Singapore’s citizens and businesses employ foreign workers for jobs that most Singaporeans won’t do. Indonesian, Malaysian and Philippine maids have been working there for decades; they stay with their employers.<\/p>\n

It’s mostly migrant men, working in construction or other low-paying, manual labor jobs, who stay in the dorms. Lee wrote that those who are ill would be taken care of.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A safe-distancing enforcement officer wearing a red armband checks his phone at a food court in Singapore on Saturday. The officers have been deployed to ensure people maintain distance from one another, as Singapore grapples with a spike in coronavirus cases. YK Chan\/AP hide caption toggle caption YK Chan\/AP A safe-distancing enforcement officer wearing a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16338,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12355\/revisions\/16338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/airpurifierspecialist.com\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}