Singapore’s health ministry confirmed an additional 1,426 cases of the coronavirus infection on Monday, a record daily jump.
The new diagnoses are are mainly among foreign workers living in dormitories.
Authorities have managed to mitigate the spread of the virus and the Covid-19 respiratory disease it causes among Singapore’s citizens by rigorous contact tracing and surveillance, earning praise from the World Health Organisation.
But the disease is spreading rapidly within the large migrant worker community, highlighting what rights groups say is a weak link in containment efforts. Authorities have stepped up testing for the disease in the dormitories.
Among the new cases, 18 are of Singaporeans or permanent residents, while 1,369 cases are of migrant workers living in dormitories.
More than 200,000 migrant workers from poorer Asian countries, including India and Bangladesh, live in crowded dormitories.
Infections have spread rapidly in the tightly packed spaces, in which social distancing is impossible.
Of 43 registered dormitories in the city, more than 50 per cent have recorded active viral clusters.
Rights groups, charities and medical experts had flagged the potential for mass infection among the more than 300,000 migrant workers living in often cramped and unsanitary conditions in the wealthy country of 5.7 million.
But some of Singapore’s early policy responses did not account for this vulnerable community, said rights groups and volunteer organisations.
A nationwide mask distribution at the start of the outbreak excluded migrant workers living in dormitories.
Moreover, measures introduced recently to confine tens of thousands of workers to packed quarters may increase the risk of infection spread, they said.
“We are definitely concerned that this approach exposes a lot more migrant workers to the risk of contracting Covid-19,” said Rachel Chhoa-Howard, a Singapore researcher for the rights group Amnesty International.
The city-state’s tally of cases stands at 8,014, with 11 deaths. Singapore has the highest number of cases of the disease in Southeast Asia, based on official data.