Singapore set a new daily case record over the weekend as the city-state once lauded for its handling of the outbreak struggled to contain the virus’s spread among its 1m low-wage migrant workers.

The new overall infections, peaking at 942 on Saturday and dropping to 596 on Sunday, took the total number of cases in the city state to 6,588. More than 90 per cent of cases reported over the weekend were among migrants living in cramped dormitories, which represent Singapore’s largest coronavirus cluster.

The sharp rise in cases, infections have jumped 160 per cent in the past week, has forced Singapore to change tack after its successful deployment of an aggressive testing regime, self-isolation of infected individuals and contact tracing. A new wave of locally transmitted infections has forced authorities to put the island under a near total lockdown.