What is stopping the publication of the number of Covid-19 tests conducted daily?

This was the question raised by Workers' Party chief Pritam Singh in a Facebook post on June 13, as he shared an announcement by the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) that all renovation projects are allowed to resume with its approval.

MOH previously announced its plan to increase daily testing capacity to 40,000 a day

Pritam noted that the government had previously said in parliament that Singapore's testing capacity would be ramped up from 8,000 to 40,000 daily tests, according to an announcement by the Ministry of Health (MOH) on May 12.

At that time, MOH mentioned that over 224,000 tests for Covid-19 had been conducted thus far, a rate that is reportedly among the highest in the world.

In particular, the number of migrant workers residing in dormitory being tested daily was reported by MOH to be at a figure of over 3,000.

Lawrence Wong announced previously that all migrant workers will be tested

The same day also saw Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong announce that the Covid-19 multi-ministry taskforce aimed to test all 300,000 plus migrant workers in the dormitories, through mass polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, as well as mass serological tests.

Wong, who is co-chair of the multi-ministry Taskforce, added that the serological test would be applied to dormitories with a higher rate of infection, building on an earlier statement he made on May 8, in which he stated that the ramped up levels of testing will have to be allocated to "areas of priority", The Straits Times (ST) reported.

Apart from migrant workers in dormitories, Wong stated that another group who will be allocated tests are essential workers heading back to their workplaces.

As such, Pritam said he expected "the authorities to be upfront and release the roadmap of its COVID-19 testing framework and the number of tests/re-tests it conducts."

Currently, the MOH provides regular updates, though not daily updates, of the total number of tests on its Covid-19 website.

Here is Pritam's post in full:

More details on ramping up testing capacity:

Top image collage left screenshot from gov.sg YouTube, right image from Pritam Singh Facebook