SINGAPORE: Singapore reported 301 new COVID-19 cases as of noon on Thursday (Aug 6), the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in its preliminary daily update.
Four cases were in the community, consisting of three Singaporeans or permanent residents and one work pass holder, and there were four imported cases.
The remaining cases were linked to foreign worker dormitories, bringing the national total to 54,555 infections.
"We continue to aggressively test the final batch of dormitory residents, and remain on track to clear all the dormitories by Aug 7, except for a few standalone blocks in the dormitories that serve as quarantine facilities," the ministry added.
"Depending on the prevalence of COVID-19 at the remaining dormitories whose residents are being tested, the daily case counts may vary.
"We expect the number to remain volatile in the coming days, before tapering down thereafter as the Inter-agency Taskforce completes the dormitory clearance."
The ministry will provide more details later on Thursday.
MOH attributed the high case number to the ongoing clearance of foreign worker dormitories, where residents were tested during their isolation/quarantine period, despite being asymptomatic.
"They are among the final batch of workers being cleared and they come from dormitories with a relatively high prevalence of COVID-19.
"Hence we expect the daily case counts to be high for the coming days, before tapering down thereafter as the inter-agency task force completes the dormitory clearance,” said MOH.
The ministry added that it is “on track” to clear all dormitories by Friday, “except for a few standalone blocks in the dormitories that serve as quarantine facilities”.
There are currently 9,700 workers in these quarantine facilities.
More than 300,000 migrant workers living in dormitories had been placed in lockdown in April as part of the Government’s strategy to curb the spread of COVID-19.
But uncertainties over their health, jobs and prolonged confinement have affected the mental state of many migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, migrant worker advocacy groups said.
In response to CNA's queries, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said on Wednesday it has not observed a spike in the number of migrant worker suicides compared to previous years, although it is aware of recent incidents involving workers living in dormitories.
In recent weeks, there have been questions about the state of workers’ mental health following at least three reports of unnatural deaths.
MOM said its Forward Assurance and Support Teams - public officers stationed at the dormitories – have stepped up efforts to “proactively look out for residents whom they assess may benefit from speaking to a mental health counsellor”.
“We have also worked with IMH to train and better equip frontline staff with the knowledge and skills to help workers who may require support,” it added.
SINGAPORE: Singapore reported 301 new COVID-19 cases as of noon on Thursday (Aug 6), the Ministry of Health (MOH) said in its preliminary daily update.
Four cases were in the community, consisting of three Singaporeans or permanent residents and one work pass holder, and there were four imported cases.
The remaining cases were linked to foreign worker dormitories, bringing the national total to 54,555 infections.
"We continue to aggressively test the final batch of dormitory residents, and remain on track to clear all the dormitories by Aug 7, except for a few standalone blocks in the dormitories that serve as quarantine facilities," the ministry added.
"Depending on the prevalence of COVID-19 at the remaining dormitories whose residents are being tested, the daily case counts may vary.
"We expect the number to remain volatile in the coming days, before tapering down thereafter as the Inter-agency Taskforce completes the dormitory clearance."
The ministry will provide more details later on Thursday.
MOH attributed the high case number to the ongoing clearance of foreign worker dormitories, where residents were tested during their isolation/quarantine period, despite being asymptomatic.
"They are among the final batch of workers being cleared and they come from dormitories with a relatively high prevalence of COVID-19.
"Hence we expect the daily case counts to be high for the coming days, before tapering down thereafter as the inter-agency task force completes the dormitory clearance,” said MOH.
The ministry added that it is “on track” to clear all dormitories by Friday, “except for a few standalone blocks in the dormitories that serve as quarantine facilities”.
There are currently 9,700 workers in these quarantine facilities.
More than 300,000 migrant workers living in dormitories had been placed in lockdown in April as part of the Government’s strategy to curb the spread of COVID-19.
But uncertainties over their health, jobs and prolonged confinement have affected the mental state of many migrant workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, migrant worker advocacy groups said.
In response to CNA's queries, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said on Wednesday it has not observed a spike in the number of migrant worker suicides compared to previous years, although it is aware of recent incidents involving workers living in dormitories.
In recent weeks, there have been questions about the state of workers’ mental health following at least three reports of unnatural deaths.
MOM said its Forward Assurance and Support Teams - public officers stationed at the dormitories – have stepped up efforts to “proactively look out for residents whom they assess may benefit from speaking to a mental health counsellor”.
“We have also worked with IMH to train and better equip frontline staff with the knowledge and skills to help workers who may require support,” it added.
SINGAPORE - There were 301 new coronavirus cases confirmed as of Thursday noon (Aug 6), taking Singapore's total to 54,555.
They included four community cases, comprising three Singaporeans or permanent residents and a work pass holder, said the Ministry of Health (MOH) on Thursday.
There were also four imported cases who had been placed on stay-home notices upon arrival in Singapore.
Migrant workers living in dormitories made up the vast majority of the other cases.
More details will be announced on Thursday night.
On Wednesday, the Popular bookstore at Jurong Point was added to the list of public places visited by Covid-19 patients while they were still infectious.
According to MOH's update on Wednesday, the bookstore was visited by at least one Covid-19 case from 12.05pm to 2.30pm on July 26.
The ministry provides this list of locations that Covid-19 patients have visited for more than 30 minutes to get those who were at these places to monitor their health closely for two weeks from the date of their visit. It said that close contacts would already have been notified and that there is no need to avoid these places as they would have been cleaned if needed.
Among these, 903 were migrant workers in dormitories who were among the final batch of workers being cleared of the coronavirus, MOH said.
They came from dormitories with a relatively high prevalence of Covid-19 and were tested when they were already in isolation or in quarantine. Many were asymptomatic.
MOH added that all dormitories should be cleared by Friday, with the exception of a few blocks in dormitories that serve as quarantine facilities. These currently house about 9,700 workers in quarantine.
The remaining five cases announced on Wednesday were four imported patients and a case in the community.
MOH had said earlier on Wednesday that there were four cases in the community, but three were re-classified after contact tracing.
The sole community case was a 26-year-old Bangladeshi work permit holder who was picked up as a result of the ministry's proactive screening of those working in essential services. He was asymptomatic and was unlinked to known cases as of Wednesday. Further tests showed that he is no longer infectious and was likely to have been infected in the past.
All four imported cases announced on Wednesday arrived in Singapore from India on July 22 and were already serving mandatory stay-home notices at dedicated facilities when they were tested.
Three were dependant's pass holders - aged one, four and six. The last was a short-term visit pass holder, aged 63, whose application to enter Singapore was approved as she is an elderly woman whose family are Singapore residents, MOH said.
The average number of new daily community cases during a week has decreased from four cases two weeks ago to two in the past week. The average number of unlinked community cases per day has fallen from two to one over the same period.
Singapore has had 27 deaths from Covid-19 complications, while 15 who tested positive have died of other causes.
Globally, the virus outbreak, which began in December last year, has infected more than 18.9 million people. More than 710,200 people have died.
WASHINGTON: The Trump administration said on Wednesday (Aug 5) it was stepping up efforts to purge "untrusted" Chinese apps from US digital networks and called the Chinese-owned short-video app TikTok and messenger app WeChat "significant threats".
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said expanded US efforts on a programme it calls Clean Network would focus on five areas and include steps to prevent various Chinese apps, as well as Chinese telecoms companies, from accessing sensitive information on American citizens and businesses.
Pompeo's announcement comes after US President Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok. The hugely popular video-sharing app has come under fire from US lawmakers and the administration over national security concerns, amid intensified tensions between Washington and Beijing.
"With parent companies based in China, apps like TikTok, WeChat and others are significant threats to personal data of American citizens, not to mention tools for CCP (Chinese Communist Party) content censorship," Pompeo said.
In an interview with state news agency Xinhua on Wednesday, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said the United States "has no right" to set up the "Clean Network" and calls the actions by Washington as "a textbook case of bullying".
"Anyone can see through clearly that the intention of the US is to protect its monopoly position in technology and to rob other countries of their proper right to development," said Wang.
TikTok currently faces a deadline of Sep 15 to either sell its US operations to Microsoft Corp or face an outright ban.
In the run-up to Trump's November re-election bid, US-China ties are at the lowest ebb in decades. Relations are strained over the global coronavirus pandemic, China's military buildup in the South China Sea, its increasing control over Hong Kong and treatment of Uighur Muslims, as well as Beijing's massive trade surpluses and technological rivalry.
Pompeo said the United States was working to prevent Chinese telecoms firm Huawei from pre-installing or making available for download the most popular US apps on its phones.
"We don't want companies to be complicit in Huawei's human rights abuses, or the CCP's surveillance apparatus," Pompeo said, without mentioning any specific US companies.
Pompeo said the State Department would work with other government agencies to protect the data of US citizens and American intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research, by preventing access from cloud-based systems run by companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, China Mobile, China Telecom and Tencent.
Pompeo said he was joining Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, and Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf in urging the US telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission, to terminate authorisations for China Telecom and three other companies to provide services to and from the United States.
He said the State Department was also working to ensure China could not compromise information carried by undersea cables that connect the United States to the global internet.
The United States has long been lobbying European and other allies to persuade them to cut out Huawei from their telecommunications networks. Huawei denies it spies for China and says the United States wants to frustrate its growth because no US company offers the same technology at a competitive price.
Pompeo's comments on Wednesday reflected a wider and more accelerated push by Washington to limit the access of Chinese technology companies to US market and consumers and, as one US official put it, to push back against a "massive campaign to steal and weaponise our data against us".
A State Department statement said momentum for the Clean Network programme was growing and more than 30 countries and territories were now Clean Countries and many of the world's biggest telecommunications companies Clean Telcos.
It called on US allies "to join the growing tide to secure our data from the CCP's surveillance state and other malign entities".
BEIRUT: Lebanese rescue teams pulled out bodies and hunted for missing people on Wednesday (Aug 5) from the wreckage caused by a massive warehouse explosion that sent a devastating blast wave across Beirut, killing at least 135.
Prime Minister Hassan Diab declared three days of mourning from Thursday as early investigations blamed negligence for the explosion at Beirut port, which has left tens of people missing and injured more than 5,000 others.
Up to a quarter of a million people were left without homes fit to live in, officials said, after shockwaves smashed building facades, sucked furniture out into streets and shattered windows miles inland.
The death toll was expected to rise from the blast, which officials blamed on a huge stockpile of highly explosive material stored for years in unsafe conditions at the port.
The explosion was the most powerful ever in Beirut, a city still scarred by civil war that ended three decades ago and reeling from an economic meltdown and a surge in coronavirus infections. The blast rattled buildings on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, about 160 km away.
A combination of satellite images shows the area, which was heavily damaged by a massive explosion and a blast wave, on Aug 5, 2020 and the same area on Nov 4, 2019 in Beirut, Lebanon. (Photo: Russian space agency Roscosmos/Handout via REUTERS)
"No words can describe the horror that has hit Beirut last night, turning it into a disaster-stricken city," President Michel Aoun said in an address to the nation during an emergency cabinet session.
Aoun said 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, used in fertilisers and bombs, was stored for six years at the port after it was seized.
The government was "determined to investigate and expose what happened as soon as possible, to hold the responsible and the negligent accountable," he said.
An official source familiar with preliminary investigations blamed the incident on "inaction and negligence", saying "nothing was done" by committees and judges involved in the matter to order the removal of hazardous material.
A member of security forces stands guard in front of a damaged building near the site of Tuesday's blast in Beirut's port area, Lebanon Aug 5, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher)
The cabinet ordered port officials involved in storing or guarding the material to be put under house arrest, ministerial sources told Reuters.
Officials have not confirmed the origin of an initial blaze that sparked the explosion, although a security source and local media said it was started by welding work.
"COLLAPSE OF LEBANON"
For many, the blast was a dreadful reminder of the 1975-1990 civil war that tore the nation apart and destroyed swathes of Beirut, much of which had since been rebuilt.
Ordinary Lebanese, who have lost jobs and watched savings evaporate in the country's financial crisis, blamed politicians who have overseen decades of state corruption and bad governance.
"This explosion seals the collapse of Lebanon. I really blame the ruling class," said Hassan Zaiter, 32, a manager at the heavily damaged Le Gray Hotel in downtown Beirut.
Relatives gathered at a cordon to Beirut port seeking information on those still missing as the search continued. Many of those killed were port and custom employees, people working in the area or those driving nearby during the Tuesday evening rush hour. Some victims were hurled out to sea by the powerful blast.
A general view shows the damage near the site of Tuesday's blast in Beirut's port area, Lebanon Aug 5, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir)
The Red Cross was coordinating with the Health Ministry to set up morgues as hospitals were overwhelmed. Health officials reported that hospitals were running out of beds and equipment to attend to the injured.
Beirut's Clemenceau Medical Center was "like a slaughterhouse, blood covering the corridors and the lifts," said Sara, one of its nurses.
Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud told Al Hadath TV that collective losses from the blast might reach as high as US$15 billion, including indirect losses related to business.
"This is the killer blow for Beirut, we are a disaster zone," said Bilal, a man in his 60s, in the downtown area.
The World Bank Group said on Wednesday it would work with Lebanon's partners to mobilize public and private financing for reconstruction and recovery. It was unclear what effect the disaster would have on the country's difficult negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, however.
A general view shows the aftermath at the site of Tuesday's blast in Beirut's port area, Lebanon Aug 5, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher)
Offers of international support poured in.
Gulf Arab states, who in the past were major financial supporters of Lebanon but recently stepped back because of what they say is Iranian meddling, sent planes with medical equipment and other supplies.
Turkey said it would send 20 doctors to help treat the injured, as well as medical and relief assistance. Iraq pledged fuel aid, while Iran offered food and a field hospital.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted: "We sympathize with the dear Lebanese citizens and stand by them in the painful tragedy of the Beirut port explosion ... Patience in the face of this incident will be a golden leaf of honour for Lebanon."
The United States, Britain and other Western nations, which have been demanding political and economic change in Lebanon, also offered aid. Germany, the Netherlands and Cyprus offered specialised search and rescue teams.
Two French planes were expected to arrive on Thursday with specialist rescue personnel and equipment, and President Emmanuel Macron was due to visit on Thursday.
FOOD SECURITY
"This is a catastrophe for Beirut and Lebanon," Mayor Jamal Itani told Reuters while inspecting damage.
The port district was left a tangled wreck, disabling the nation's main route for imports needed to feed a nation of more than 6 million people.
A Lebanese couple inspect the damage to their house in an area overlooking the destroyed Beirut port on Aug 5, 2020 in the aftermath of a massive explosion in the Lebanese capital. (Photo: JOSEPH EID / AFP)
The country's main grain silo at the port was destroyed in the blast and Beirut Governor Abboud said a crisis might develop without international intervention.
Lebanon was already struggling to house and feed refugees fleeing conflict in neighbouring Syria and has no trade or other ties with its only other neighbour Israel.
"On a scale, this explosion is scaled down from a nuclear bomb rather than up from a conventional bomb," said Roland Alford, managing director of British explosive ordnance disposal firm Alford Technologies. "This is huge."
A view shows the aftermath at the site of Tuesday's blast in Beirut's port area, Lebanon on Aug 5, 2020. (Photo: REUTERS/Issam Abdallah)
The blast also prompted the Special Tribunal for Lebanon on Wednesday to postpone its verdict in the trial over the 2005 bombing that killed ex-Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri to Aug 18. The tribunal's decision had been expected this Friday.
The UN-backed court put on trial four suspects from the Iranian-backed Shi'ite Muslim group Hezbollah. Hariri and 21 others were killed by a big truck bomb in another area of the Beirut waterfront, about 2km from the port.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said the US government had not totally ruled out the possibility that Tuesday's explosion was an attack, and said it is still gathering intelligence on the blast.
BEIRUT: Walid Assi was cooking at a Beirut pizza joint on Tuesday (Aug 4) night when a huge blast wave pushed him down. The ground beneath him shook. He saw a flash of white. The roof caved in.
"We can't believe we got out of this alive," the chef told Reuters in a central district of the Lebanese capital. "People were bleeding, lying on the ground, running around in the streets ... It was like a nightmare."
Staff stood aghast near the restaurant the morning after a massive warehouse explosion a few kilometres away at Beirut port, which investigators blamed on negligence. Once the shock subsided, Assi said, the next feeling was anger.
"Why should innocent people have to suffer like this because of worthless rulers? Is this how cheap our lives are to them?"
Beirut's residents woke up on Wednesday to a capital in desolation. Rescuers dug through the rubble for survivors in a city that was already buckling under the weight of a financial meltdown and a coronavirus outbreak.
The explosion killed at least 135 people, injured 5,000 and pushed up to 250,000 out of their homes after the shockwaves ripped out doors and shattered windows miles inland.
The death toll is expected to rise. Officials blamed the blast on a huge stockpile of highly explosive material stored for years in unsafe conditions at the port.
For many Lebanese, it was the latest blow they blamed on a clutch of sectarian political elites that have ruled for decades.
The government has vowed to hold those responsible for the explosion to account.
But for workers and residents sweeping up debris in the popular nightlife neighbourhood of Gemmayze, clouds of dust swirling around them, it sounded just like the empty promises they were tired of.
Thousands of Lebanese have protested since October against state waste and corruption that pushed the country into financial ruin. The local currency has since crashed, sending prices soaring and leaving many poor.
IT'S AS IF LEADERS 'WANT US TO DIE'
"What more can happen to us other than death? It's as if they want us to die," Rony Abu Saad said outside the blown-out storefront of his sandwich shop. One of his employees had died under the wreckage inside.
"This country now looks like its rulers, the garbage and rubble in the streets, it looks like them," he said. "If any of them has a speck of consciousness left, they would leave."
Lebanese people gather on a bridge overlooking the destroyed silo in the Beirut port on Aug 5, 2020. (Photo: AFP/Joseph Eid)
Around him, shards of glass and twisted metal littered the pub street. The roof of a large petrol station had crashed atop its pumps. A loft building lost all its balconies.
In one alleyway, collapsed billboards and tree branches smashed a row of cars. In another, a man paced back and forth on the sidewalk muttering "this is war".
Abu Saad, whose furniture in his house near the sandwich shop was torn to pieces, hadn't slept all night. "We're all still in shock, none of us can understand the scale of the destruction," he said.
The wreckage shocked many even in a city that has weathered crisis after crisis, including a 1975-1990 civil war, a 2006 war with Israel and a series of assassination bombings.
"The worst part is this government and all those before it did nothing. Nobody cares. Did they know this warehouse was there, and they kept it there near our houses?" said Habib Medawar, 65, landlord of a building where two people had died.
He sat outside in a yellow plastic chair, staring out towards the sea. "I don't want to do anything, I can't even bring myself to go inside."
Nearby, Pierre Mrad, the medical director of a hospital in Gemmayze that was knocked out of service, held back tears. The blast had wounded staff and killed one of the nurses.
"We evacuated all the patients. The hospital will have to be rebuilt. There's nothing left, nothing to be done right now," he said. "We have to start all over. What more can I say?"
