SINGAPORE - The sight of 30 pairs of frustrated eyes peering out of their rooms to greet him as he entered the S11 dormitory in Punggol is one image Mr Mark Cheong will carry with him from his work covering the pandemic as a photojournalist for The Straits Times.

The migrant workers had been in lockdown in their rooms for about a month at that point, and Mr Cheong was one of the first from the media to set foot in the dorms to try and give the public a sense of what was happening there.