To win Covid-19 war - treat migrants and refugees as Malaysians

We all wish to protect ourselves from Covid-19 infection. We are fearful of those we think may be infected. And we try to identify them, in the hope we can isolate and treat them, so we can be safe. 

Due to the rising number of cases among migrant workers in Singapore, we are now trying to target our migrant workers for testing. Let us do this with compassion and care to achieve the best results.

Testing every single migrant worker blindly is not helpful in the long run. Just like testing every single Malaysian would not be helpful. 

If a migrant worker is symptomatic, or has a history of exposure, or stays in an outbreak area, yes, please test them all. Again just like you would test a Malaysian.

If you test today, and the result is negative, it means the worker is not infected today. Then, how about next week? Or next month, if he happens to unknowingly have had exposure to a Malaysian who is positive. And that Malaysian is asymptomatic, and no one knows. 

What then?

Every single person in this country must be treated equally if we wish to win this war against Covid-19. 

The most important way to think, and I quote senior consultant paediatrician Dr Amar Singh:

"We need to behave and act as though everyone around us is Covid-19 positive. We need to behave and act as though we have an asymptomatic infection of Covid-19 and can infect others. 

"We need to protect all elder persons as if they are our parents and all those vulnerable to Covid-19 as our sisters and brothers".

What would help migrant workers in the long run, is to ensure that employers implement the 'new normal' SOPs in the workplace, and also in the living quarters of the migrant workers. 

This means practising safe physical distancing of one metre from each other at all times, providing hand sanitisers at the entrance of the premises, and at other commonly used areas for workers to wash their hands, providing all workers with new face masks every day, to check their temperature every day, do a daily roll call to check if any workers have a fever, cough, sore throat, difficulty in breathing or diarrhoea. 

And to take any sick worker to receive immediate medical attention, and get a Covid-19 swab test done if necessary. The government must ensure enforcement, with regular supervision and surprise checks.

We must continue to do targeted testing, as advocated by the Ministry of Health (MOH), and as practised in South Korea. No one must interfere with this very rational public health measure that the MOH has been carrying out.

We are all in this storm together.

Citizens, non-citizens, all of us. 

Stop treating migrants and refugees differently when it comes to Covid-19 screening. It will backfire on us.

---

Dr Cecilia Anthonysamy is an emergency physician at Hospital Serdang. - Mkini