Technology to help foreign workers in dorms monitor their health
They can now monitor their health through telemedicine and pulse oximeters
With the management of foreign workers in dormitories entering the recovery phase, the workers are being given help to monitor their health through telemedicine and a gadget that checks blood oxygen levels.
About 8,000 pulse oximeters have been distributed so far and a further 12,000 will be given out, Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said yesterday.
The devices monitor a person's blood oxygen level and can help detect early signs of a deterioration in health.
Monitoring is seen as the next step in containing the virus, which has predominantly affected foreign workers.
"Now having stabilised the situation as well as strengthened the medical support, we need to plan for the next phase," said Mrs Teo.
The idea is to help workers make a full recovery and resume work safely to get the economy back on track. It is the third phase of the strategy that Singapore has rolled out to deal with migrant workers who have accounted for most of the Covid-19 cases here.
The first phase involved safe distancing measures in dorms and relocating workers in essential services while the second phase involved putting a medical support plan in place.
Migrant workers continued to account for a majority of the 876 new cases reported yesterday, which brought the total count in Singapore to 23,336. The focus is now on the third phase.
"A very important aspect of this recovery phase will be how to strengthen the health monitoring and the health surveillance in our dormitories in particular," said Mrs Teo, speaking during a visit to JTC Space @ Tuas, where a carpark converted into a medical post facility for foreign workers will be operational from today.
A medical post has doctors and other staff on duty to address the healthcare needs of foreign workers who have acute respiratory infection symptoms such as fever and coughs.
"We are introducing new measures that will help us... do the health surveillance... in a more comprehensive way," said Mrs Teo. "We hope that by doing so we will be able to help the individual worker prevent a recurrence if he has already been infected or for those who have not been infected, to prevent them from falling sick in the first place."
The monitoring process includes tele-consultation services available to workers in dormitories through their mobile phones. They can fill in an online form and a doctor will video call them back in two hours. Around 400 such consultations have been conducted since April 25.
The doctors are from the nine private healthcare providers under the Ministry of Health's regulatory sandbox.
Tele-consultation services will be available even when on-site medical facilities or external Public Health Preparedness Clinics are closed for the day.
The JTC Space @ Tuas medical post facility is the fifth of its kind, and between them they can cater to around 75,000 foreign workers in factory-converted dorms and temporary on-site quarters.
All 43 purpose-built dorms have their own medical facilities to cater to 200,000 workers. There are also eight tele-kiosks at dorms.
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