The government is reportedly considering a more aggressive approach to tackling the Covid-19 outbreak, specifically mass testing for the population.

This approach, coupled with the additional safe distancing measures imposed earlier in April, will hopefully allow Singapore to open its economy in as soon as "a month's time", according to Minister for Trade and Industry Chan Chun Sing.

Chan said this to Bloomberg in a video interview on Thursday, April 23:

"Of course, the migrant workers, many of them would be in some industries like construction, marine, and offshore and at the current moment, they are staying in their dormitories for a period of time for us to make sure that they are healthy before we resume work.

But for the rest of the economy, for those [jobs] that can be done online, businesses continue to do what they need to do and we hope that in a month's time we will be able to progressively reopen the economy with much more testings for the entire population and, at the same time, to take on the additional safe distancing measures."

In his Apr. 21 address to the nation, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also said that Singapore is progressively scaling up testing for Covid-19.

Aside from procuring test kits from other countries, Singapore is also developing and manufacturing our own.

The Health Ministry's director of medical services, Associate Professor Kenneth Mak, said on Apr. 22 that Singapore does "targetted testing" because it is unable to test every single person in the country.

Mak said that the daily number of tests can reach up to 3,000 on some days.

1,500 to 2,500 of these tests are carried out on migrant workers.

More from Chan's interview with Bloomberg here:

Top image from Thailand Medical News.