Another 98,289 migrant workers in Singapore have been found positive through serology testing -- which identifies those who had been infected in the past -- contributing to an overall prevalence rate of 47 percent, according the Ministry of Manpower. The finding is further proof that infection is vastly under-detected across the board, and reflects the prevalence of the virus in tightly-spaced worker accommodations. In neighboring Malaysia, which supplies about two-thirds of the world’s latex gloves, the government last month imposed mandatory screening for the 1.7 million foreign workers in the country. For every infection in the dormitories detected through the polymerase chain reaction testing, “another 1.8 cases were untested and undetected at the time, and were identified subsequently only through serology testing,” the statement said. “This is not surprising as many migrant workers did not have any symptoms, and thus would not have sought treatment and received a PCR test in the process.”

Source: The Standard December 16, 2020 04:30 UTC