While Malaysia sees improvement in the number of COVID-19 cases over the past week, the opposite is happening to our neighbour Singapore.

Today (20 April) alone, the country announced 1,426 new cases, most of which involves foreign workers living in dormitories.

Channel News Asia (CNA) reported that this brought the total number of cases in the country to 8,014.

The island nation has surpassed Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia to become the country with the highest COVID-19 cases in Southeast Asia.

Despite imposing partial lockdown recently, it seems like a measure should have been imposed earlier as there were already high number of cases recorded by the time it was imposed.

Very few cases involves locals and permenant residents

Among the new cases announced today, only 18 involved local and permenant residents of the small island.

The majority of the new cases are reportedly work permit holders living in foreign worker dormitories, the country's Minister of Health said in a statement.

The major concern now are the low-wage foreign workers who live in close proximity in dormitories and construction workers, the report said.

According to the report, a total of 18 dormitories housing these foreign workers have been gazetted as isolation areas as the numbers continue to rise.

In fact, one of the dormitories, located at Punggol, recorded a total of 1,508 cases alone.

Let's hope our neighbour finds a way to contain the spread of the virus as soon as possible.