THE I DIPLOMAT
By Sebastian Strangio
July 07, 2021
With health workers on strike and much of the public in open rebellion, a new wave of infections could prove devastating.
The coronavirus is rapidly spreading in crisis-hit Myanmar, with the country recording another record number of daily COVID-19 cases, suggesting that the political situation here is on the verge of being compounded by a grave public health emergency.
The regime’s health ministry reported records of 2,318 cases on Sunday and 2,969 cases on Monday, bringing the total number of infections since the start of the pandemic to 168,374, with 3,461 deaths.
Given the country’s unstable political situation, which has prompted sharp disruptions to COVID-19 testing and containment efforts, it is almost certain that these are underestimates. Yesterday, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported that hundreds of people have died of COVID-19 over the past 30 days in a single township in northwestern Myanmar.