Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced on Tuesday that the partial lockdown that is in place to curb the spread of COID-19 would be extended by four weeks until June 1.

Several measures, which the Singapore leader calls a “circuit breaker,” including shutting schools and most workplaces temporarily were in place as part of the partial lockdown. These measures, which were implemented two weeks ago, were initially supposed to end on May 4. 

Hot spots, such as popular wet markets, remain a problem, as large groups of people continue to congregate there, reports quoting Lee during his fourth national address on the COVID-19 situation said.

He said the number of unlinked cases has not come down, which suggests there could be a “hidden reservoir” of cases in the community.

Singapore must, therefore, continue with its tight circuit breaker measures to decisively bring down numbers in the community, media reports quoted Lee as saying.

He called on all Singaporeans to stay home as far as possible and urged those who have to go out to do so alone and not as a group or with family.

The announcement to extend the partial lockdown comes after the country’s Ministry of Health preliminarily confirmed another 1,111 cases of the coronavirus disease, taking its total number of cases to 9,125 since the outbreak. 

The maximum number of cases are being found among migrant workers living in dormitories, said the ministry.

Singapore relies on foreign migrant workers for its construction business.

Outbreaks in several worker dormitories have seen the numbers in Singapore balloon from less than a dozen a day in February to hundreds of new cases daily in recent weeks.

Photo Credit: Kyodo News