The government has been "transparent" and "upfront" about the way it has dealt with Covid-19, Minister for National Development Lawrence Wong stressed at a press conference on July 7.

Wong was responding to a question about how Singaporean voters will assess the performance of the Covid-19 task force in the upcoming elections and whether the task force's handling of the Covid-19 situation will "work in PAP's favour."

Wong replied:

"At the end of the day Singaporeans will have to judge. We are in election campaign now, we have been transparent, upfront with Singaporeans about the way we have dealt with Covid-19."

Covid-19 task force's achievements highlighted

Wong then added that the task force had been meeting the media on a weekly basis, even during the campaigning period.

"We have been meeting the media, every week, even now during the campaign, we have continued to meet regularly and to deal with the situation as best as we can."

He also highlighted the outcomes that the task force had achieved thus far, such as:

• Bringing down infection rates in the community "significantly", and protecting Singaporeans, "especially the vulnerable ones",
• Achieving one of the world's lowest fatality rates from the virus,
• Mounting a massive effort to resolve the outbreak of Covid-19 among migrant workers.

On the last outcome, Wong added,"We do not know of any other country that has mounted as significant an operation as Singapore has, taking care of their migrant workers."

Over 50 per cent of all migrant workers have been tested for Covid-19

Emphasising that the government had "moved in swiftly" to deal with the situation, Wong said that the government was now in the process of testing all of the migrant workers, with over 50 per cent of the tests done.

The tests were expected to be "almost entirely completed by the end of this month, maybe slightly beyond that".

Wong also highlighted that apart from the migrant workers' health, the task force had also taken efforts to take care of their well-being, food and salaries, ensuring that they were still paid.

As per the minister:

"We have done everything we can to ensure the overall well being of these workers because we know that they are an important part of our society. We want to do everything we can to take care of them, because they have contributed much to Singapore."

Wong then added that much still remained to be done and summed up the performance of the task as such:

"So whether it's community infections, fatality rates or migrant workers, these are the facts. This is what we have gone over the last six months working continuously."

Top image collage from Lawrence Wong Facebook