Singapore is assessing whether migrant workers who have recovered from COVID-19 might be safer on cruise ships than back in dormitories that have become infection hotbeds, despite problems controlling onboard outbreaks encountered elsewhere.
The city-state has seen virus cases surge in sprawling housing complexes for foreign workers, recording its biggest ever jump in cases on Thursday, and is looking for new accommodation solutions for hundreds of workers.
About 60 percent of the 4,427 people infected on the island stay in dormitories, where mainly South Asian workers live 12 to 20 in a room, and share toilets in conditions some workers have said are unsanitary.
Photo: AFP
“Cruise ships are being considered as they have readily available rooms and en suite toilets to minimize person-to-person contact,” the city-state’s tourism board said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
It said the measure could be rolled out for workers who have recovered from the novel coronavirus and tested negative, helping free up space in dormitories. Authorities are also moving some healthy workers from dorms into public housing, military camps and industrial ships used to accommodate offshore staff.
People rarely catch infectious diseases twice as they develop some immunity, medical experts say, though there have been isolated reports of such cases since the pandemic began in China in December last year.
Two ships owned by Genting Cruise Lines that could each accommodate up to 2,000 people were being checked to see if they had suitable ventilation systems, security protocols and infection control measures, the tourism board said.
Cruise ships have also been at the center of mass outbreaks during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 130,000 lives and infected more than 2 million people globally.
One of the most notable incidents involved the Diamond Princess, which was quarantined for nearly a month in Japan, with eventually more than 700 people becoming infected.
Ethiopia’s Afar region on Friday called on civilians to take up arms against rebels from neighboring Tigray, signaling a potential escalation in fighting that has already displaced tens of thousands this week. “Every Afar should protect their land with any means available, whether by guns, sticks or stones,” regional President Awol Arba said in an interview aired by regional state media. “No weapons can make us kneel down. We will win this war with our strong determination.” Tigrayan rebels launched operations in Afar last weekend, saying they were targeting pro-government troops massing along the two regions’ shared border. A government official said on
The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has fully vaccinated 90 percent of its eligible adult population within just seven days, the Bhutanese Ministry of Health said on Tuesday. The tiny country, wedged between India and China and home to nearly 800,000 people, began giving out second doses on Tuesday last week in a mass drive that has been hailed by the UN Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) as “arguably the fastest vaccination campaign to be executed during a pandemic.” Bhutan grabbed headlines in April when its government said it had inoculated about the same percentage of eligible adults with the first dose
‘LIBERATE HONG KONG’: The prosecution argued that the slogan was in the tradition of rallying cries for secession dating back to the Qin and Qing dynasties Three Hong Kong judges are to rule tomorrow whether the protest slogan: “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our Times” is a call for secession when they deliver a verdict on charges against a man arrested at a demonstration last year. The landmark ruling could have long-term implications for how a Beijing-imposed National Security Law against secession, terrorism, subversion and collusion with foreign forces reshapes the territory’s common law traditions, some legal scholars say. Democracy advocates say that a ruling to outlaw the slogan would tighten limits on free speech. The slogan was last year chanted during democracy protests, posted online, scrawled on walls,
African nations should build capacity to produce vaccines on the continent and work with pharmaceutical companies to ensure that the raw materials needed to produce the inoculations are available, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said. While a waiver on the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights that is being discussed at the WTO is seen as a way to improve the supply of COVID-19 vaccines to the world’s least inoculated continent, Okonjo-Iweala said that only a handful of African countries have the capacity to produce the life-saving drugs. “There [are] a handful of countries — maybe Tunisia, Morocco to some extent,
RSS