Myanmar’s Ex-Dictator Than Shwe, Wife Enter Hospital as Precaution Against COVID-19

The Irrawaddy
12 August 2021 

Then Myanmar military dictator Than Shwe (right) and his wife Daw Kyaing Kyaing in 2010. / Khin Maung Win

Myanmar’s former dictator Than Shwe and his wife were admitted to a military hospital in Naypyitaw several days ago as a precaution amid the country’s raging COVID-19 outbreak, according to a senior military official.

The pair—who are reportedly in good health and are believed to have received their inoculations, as the country’s vaccine program prioritizes anyone over 65—entered the hospital “to have close medical attention in case they have been infected with COVID-19,” the military official said.

ASEAN urged to address Myanmar crises, as special envoy named

Aljazeera
4 Aug 2021

Rights groups call on regional political bloc to work with shadow NUG, local health organisations to deliver urgent humanitarian aid.

Volunteers in protective suits carry a COVID patient lying on a bed as they try to relocate oxygen-dependent patients from the COVID centre during floods in Karen state [Karen Information Center/Handout via Reuters]

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) urgently needs to address Myanmar’s “dire” human rights and humanitarian crises, which are being compounded by a COVID-19 health emergency and recent flooding, rights groups have said, warning the regional bloc to avoid giving legitimacy to the country’s military.

Yunnan Sees COVID-19 Spike as Myanmar Slides Toward ‘Super-Spreader’ State

THE I DIPLOMAT

Sebastian Strangio
July 21, 2021

 

The former head of the Myanmar’s COVID-19 response says the country could be facing “up to 400,000” dead.

China yesterday reported its highest daily toll of COVID-19 infections since January, driven by a sudden increase in infections in Yunnan province, where cases are spilling across the border from Myanmar.

The National Health Commission reported 65 new confirmed cases on Monday, up from 31 the day before. As Reuters noted, this was the most since January 30, when 92 new cases were reported.

The Economic Impact of Myanmar’s Coup

BORGEN

ON JULY 17, 2021

MORRISTOWN, New Jersey — On the morning of February 1, 2021, a military coup in Myanmar ended a four-year experiment in democracy. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Myanmar’s military history, the militia’s lasting power on Myanmar’s politics and the increasing power of the civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, created the conditions for a coup. To understand the possible economic impact of Myanmar’s coup, it is crucial to understand the country’s political and economic history.

‘We can’t breathe... and the whole world is silent’: Myanmar begs for oxygen as Covid crisis worsens

The Telegraph

ByNicola Smith, and Nandi Theint
ASIA CORRESPONDENT
IN YANGON
16 July 2021

Just like in India, Myanmar's citizens take their desperate pleas for help to social media.

People are lining up across Myanmar to find lifesaving oxygen CREDIT: Ye Aung Thu/AFP

Myanmar’s people were first deprived of their democratic rights, and are now being starved of oxygen itself, by a February coup that has plunged the Southeast Asian nation into a political and medical crisis.

As a deadly wave of Covid-19 fueled by the Delta variant sweeps a country where the healthcare system has virtually collapsed, people have flooded social media with pleas for oxygen supplies and coveted hospital beds as their loved ones suffocate at home.

Amid Coup Crisis, COVID-19 Hits New Daily Highs in Myanmar

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.

Bangladesh seeks UN intervention to end Rohingya crisis

THE NATION

Anadolu
June 18, 2021

Bangladesh urged UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to help resolve the Rohingya crisis, saying deteriorating political situation in Myanmar is hampering the peaceful repatriation of refugees.

Bangladesh is currently hosting about 1.2 million Rohingya refugees in camps in the southeast coast of Cox’s Bazar. Uncertainty looms over their repatriation to Rakhine state following a military coup in Myanmar on Feb. 1.

With the National Covid-19 vaccination programme in full swing, Rohingyas living in Malaysia being left behind

malay mail
Wednesday, 16 Jun 2021 
BY KENNETH TEE

A general view of the Rohingya settlement here near Bandar Baru Sentul June 13, 2021. ― Picture by Hari Anggara

KUALA LUMPUR, June 16 — As the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP) picks up speed around the country, one group of people are not even sure when they will get vaccinated.

The Rohingyas — a minority group of Myanmar Muslims once described by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as “one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world” — are refugees who have been in Malaysia since the 1970s but the biggest influx came in 2017 after the military crackdown in Myanmar.

Illegal entrant tests positive for COVID-19 in Maungdaw Twsp

DMG
DMG Newsroom

11 June 2021, Maungdaw

One of 19 Muslims in Maungdaw Township who entered Arakan State illegally from Bangladesh was found to have been infected with coronavirus, according to a source from the Maungdaw District People’s Hospital.

The person has been identified as 36-year-old Mamat Taw Yup from the Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh. He tested positive for the virus on June 10, according to the medical superintendent of the Maungdaw District People’s Hospital, Dr. Nu Kay Thi San.

Concern as 24% of Rohingya Inmates in Jammu Detention Centre Test COVID Positive

THE WIRE

Umer Maqbool
26/MAY/2021

A Rohingya Muslim man prepares to walk through a full-body sanitization tunnel installed at COVID-19 dedicated Government Medical College hospital, in Jammu, Sunday, April 19, 2020. Photo: PTI

Srinagar: Nearly 24% of the inmates of Jammu and Kashmir’s detention centre for Rohingya people have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past three days, triggering concerns about a serious outbreak at the centre.

Over 200 Rohingya are being detained at the holding centre at Hira Nagar of Jammu’s Kathua district since March 6 this year. “Fifty three Rohingya refugees have tested positive for COVID-19 here out of 218 samples collected,” Kathua’s chief medical officer, Dr Ashok Choudhary told The Wire.

53 Rohingya test positive at Kathua jail facility

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

Arun Sharma
Jammu
May 27, 2021

Pointing out that they were found Covid-positive during a three-day special test drive at the centre, Kathua Chief Medical Officer Dr Ashok Choudhary said all of them are asymptomatic.

There are nearly 220 Rohingya, detained from Jammu following a verification drive, at the holding centre -- the J&K administration had set up the centres under the Foreigners Act in March.

Fifty-three Rohingya detained at a “holding centre” in a sub-jail in Kathua’s Hiranagar town have tested positive for Covid, officials said. They have been isolated from other inmates and health officials are keeping a watch on their condition.

Pointing out that they were found Covid-positive during a three-day special test drive at the centre, Kathua Chief Medical Officer Dr Ashok Choudhary said all of them are asymptomatic. “We have isolated them and provided them with corona kits…our doctors are visiting the holding centre daily and keeping a watch on their condition.”

53 Rohingyas test positive for Covid-19 at holding centre in J&K's Kathua

INDIA TODAY

Sunil Bhat

Jammu

May 28, 2021

The 53, out of over 200 Rohingyas at the Hiranagar Sub-Jail in Kathua district, have been quarantined. All of them are reportedly asymptomatic and are under the supervision of prison doctors.

All the remaining inmates would be tested on Thursday and Friday to stop the virus from spreading further. (PTI file image of Rohingya refugees in Jammu)

As many as 53 Rohingya were found Covid-19 positive at the Hiranagar Sub-Jail in Jammu's Kathua district during a three-day testing drive, officials informed on Wednesday.

All those who have tested positive are asymptomatic and have been isolated by the authorities. "A total of 53 Rohingyas were found positive during screening since Monday and all of them are asymptomatic. We are keeping a watch on their condition," PTI quoted Chief Medical Officer, Kathua, Ashok Chaudhary as saying.

5 Rohingya refugee camps under lockdown in Bangladesh after Covid-19 outbreak

LA PRENS LATINA MEDIA

Online News Editor
May 21, 2021

Dhaka, May 21 (EFE).- Bangladesh on Friday imposed lockdown in five of the 34 Rohingya camps in the southeastern district of Cox’s Bazar after detecting a sharp increase in coronavirus cases among the refugees living there.

“Some restrictions in Rohingya camps were already in place. Due to an increase in transmission, more restrictions were imposed in five camps until further instruction,” Bangladesh’s deputy commissioner for refugees, relief and repatriation, Mohammad Shamsuddoha, told EFE.

ကိုဗစ္ကူးစက္မႈ အေျခအေန ေၾကာင္႔ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္ စခန္းေတြ သြားလာမႈ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္

VOA

ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာပုိင္း)

21 ေမ၊ 2021

ကိုဗစ္ကပ္ေရာဂါ ကူးစက္မႈေတြ တိုးလာေနတာေၾကာင့္ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏိုင္ငံက ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္စခန္း ၅ ခုမွာ သြားလာလႈပ္ရွားမႈေတြကို ၾကာသပေတးေန႔မွာပဲ ကန္႔သတ္ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္လိုက္ပါတယ္။

ခန္႔မွန္းေခ် ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ၁ သိန္းေက်ာ္ေလာက္ ေနထိုင္တဲ့ စခန္းေတြမွာ လူစုလူေ၀း လုပ္တာေတြ၊ စခန္းတခုနဲ႔တခု သြားလာတာေတြ အပါအ၀င္ ကပ္ေရာဂါ ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ေရး ကန္႔သတ္ခ်က္ေတြ ထုတ္ျပန္လိုက္တာျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏိုင္ငံ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ားဆိုင္ရာ လက္ေထာက္ ေကာ္မရွင္နာမင္းႀကီး Shamsud Douza က AFP သတင္းဌာနကို ေျပာခဲ့တာပါ။

Covid-19: 10 Rohingyas dead, 507 infected since last year

The Daily Star
Star Digital Report

April 20, 2021

File photo/Reuters

A total of 507 Rohingya refugees were infected with Covid-19 in the camps of Cox's Bazar since the coronavirus outbreak started March last year.

Dr Md Mahbubur Rahman, civil surgeon of Cox's Bazar, confirmed the information to our Cox's Bazar staff correspondent.

Of the 507 infected Rohingyas, 10 died from Covid-19, the doctor said.

Currently, nearly 8,88,457 Rohingyas are living in 34 refugee camps in Ukhia and Teknaf upazilas of Cox's Bazar, added our correspondent.

According to the Cox's Bazar Civil Surgeon's office, a total of 7,590 people were infected with coronavirus in Cox's Bazar district till yesterday since March last year and 89 people died. Among them, 507 are Rohingya refugees and the remaining are local residents of Cox's Baza.

Concern among Muslims over halal status of COVID-19 vaccine

ARAB NEWS
AP
December 20, 2020

• Spokespeople for Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca have said that pork products are not part of their COVID-19 vaccines
• But limited supply and preexisting deals worth millions of dollars with other companies means that some countries with large Muslim populations will receive vaccines that have not yet been certified to be gelatin-free

JAKARTA: In October, Indonesian diplomats and Muslim clerics stepped off a plane in China. While the diplomats were there to finalize deals to ensure millions of doses reached Indonesian citizens, the clerics had a much different concern: Whether the COVID-19 vaccine was permissible for use under Islamic law.

As companies race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine and countries scramble to secure doses, questions about the use of pork products — banned by some religious groups — has raised concerns about the possibility of disrupted immunization campaigns.

ကိုဗစ္ ဒုတိယလွိုင္း ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ျပန္ေတြဆီက အစျပဳသ လား

လြတ္လပ္တဲ့အာရွအသံ ( RFA )

ျမန္မာဌာန | သတင္းမ်ား

မိုးျမင့္
2020-10-02

ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕က ကိုဗစ္-၁၉ သံသယလူနာမ်ားအား ေစာင့္ၾကည့္ေရးစခန္းမ်ားကို ပို႔ေဆာင္ေပးေနၾကေသာ PPE ကာကြယ္ေရးဝတ္စုံျပည့္ ဝတ္ဆင္ထားသည့္ ေစတနာ့ဝန္ထမ္းမ်ား။
Photo: AFP

ကိုရိုနာဗိုင္းရပ္စ္ ဒုတိယလွိုင္းဟာ ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္နိုင္ငံဘက္ကေန ျပန္လာတဲ့ ေနရပ္ျပန္လာသူေတြဆီကေန အစျပဳတာ ျဖစ္နိုင္ေျခမ်ားေၾကာင္း ဗဟိုကူးစက္ေရာဂါတိုက္ဖ်က္ေရးဌာန ညႊန္ၾကားေရးမႉး ေဒါက္တာခင္ခင္ ႀကီး က RFA ကိုေျပာပါတယ္။

MYANMAR: ROHINGYA DROWNING IN BLAME FOR SECOND WAVE OF COVID-19

ASIA MEDIA

September 26, 2020

SARA ALTUWAIJRI WRITES — Myanmar is facing a second wave of COVID-19, new cases are skyrocketing and, with general elections coming November 8, officials are accusing Rohingya of spreading the second wave of COVID. Why the blame? So that those aiming for election or re-election can gain people’s support. As elections get closer, politicians are spreading hate against the Rohingya. As stated by Rohingya activist Nay San Lwin, “Politicians in Myanmar are always trying to take advantage of the situation we are in. Although there were no Rohingya victims in the second COVID-19 wave, some politicians began propagating against us.” She adds that despite the fact that the first two new cases of coronavirus involved Rakhine Buddhists, Muslim Rohingya are blamed for the second wave and accused of bringing the virus from Bangladesh.

Racism Is Fueling Myanmar’s Deadly Second Wave of COVID-19

THE I DIPLOMAT
By Andrew Nachemson
September 11, 2020

Anti-migrant — and especially anti-Rohingya and anti-Rakhine — sentiments are undermining efforts to control the pandemic.

This article is freeThe Diplomat has removed paywall restrictions on our coverage of the COVID–19 crisis.

As COVID-19 cases surge in Myanmar, the country’s famously serene State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be getting flustered. In a severe speech delivered September 2, she castigated “reckless and unsympathetic” nightclub owners, admonished Yangon residents for flouting COVID-19 restrictions, and threatened legal punishment against uncooperative citizens. On August 24, a week after the second wave began, she also warned against potential racial tension in Rakhine state, the epicenter of Myanmar’s renewed outbreak, reminding Burmese that recent violence there has made Myanmar a global “embarrassment.”

Racism Is Fueling Myanmar’s Deadly Second Wave of COVID-19

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Andrew Nachemson 

September 11, 2020

Anti-migrant — and especially anti-Rohingya and anti-Rakhine — sentiments are undermining efforts to control the pandemic. 

A man walks past while local residents gather near a blocked street in a lockdown area to help control the spread of the COVID-19, Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, in Yangon, Myanmar. Credit: AP Photo/Thein Zaw

As COVID-19 cases surge in Myanmar, the country’s famously serene State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be getting flustered. In a severe speech delivered September 2, she castigated “reckless and unsympathetic” nightclub owners, admonished Yangon residents for flouting COVID-19 restrictions, and threatened legal punishment against uncooperative citizens. On August 24, a week after the second wave began, she also warned against potential racial tension in Rakhine state, the epicenter of Myanmar’s renewed outbreak, reminding Burmese that recent violence there has made Myanmar a global “embarrassment.”