Singapore's battle against the COVID-19 pandemic is now focusing on locally transmitted cases, which are outnumbering the imported ones.
At a press conference on Tuesday, March 31, Minister Lawrence Wong said that the unlinked cases are particularly worrying.
The country's contact tracing team is going all out to trace every new case, identify the links and ringfence the cluster, said Wong, who is the co-chair of the Multi-Ministry Taskforce on COVID-19.
"But it does not help them, or it will be very difficult for them as they go about doing their work, that we see new cases popping up every day," he said.
This is why safe distancing measures are important, he added.
Workplaces have been venues of transmission in many of the recent COVID-19 cases, and it is now essential for employers to get more of their staff to work from home. The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) is pushing harder on telecommuting, Wong stressed.
Social gatherings are another area in which the government is working to thin out crowds and get people to abide by safe distancing measures. Throwing a party with "just ten people" – which meets the social distancing limit – "really misses the point", Wong said.
"The point of all these measures is to reduce our activity level; it is to minimise contact with others so that each one of us can help to slow down the spread of the virus."
He urged Singapore residents to "stay at home as much as you can, avoid crowded places, minimise contact with others outside of your immediate family members."
