Myanmar is at risk of becoming a super-spreader Covid state that fuels outbreaks across the region, the UN special rapporteur for the country has warned as he urged the security council to call for a ceasefire.
The south-east Asian country is facing its most severe outbreak yet, on top of a deep political and economic crisis brought about by the military coup in February. Its vaccination programme has ground to a standstill, testing has collapsed, and government hospitals are barely functioning.
The exact number of cases and fatalities in Myanmar was unclear, said Tom Andrews, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, in an interview with the Guardian. The targeting of journalists and doctors has made it hard to obtain accurate information about the crisis.
“We know that this is a spike upward. It’s a very rapid, an alarmingly rapid rise,” said Andrews.
According to the ministry of health and sports, 4,629 people have died of Covid since 1 June. The figures are thought to be an underestimate, The Guardian reported.
“In Yangon, it’s common to see three types of lines,” Andrews added. “One before ATMs, one for oxygen supplies – which is very dangerous because people are literally being shot at by the Myanmar forces for standing in line for oxygen – and the third being lines at crematoriums and morgues.”
There is a severe shortage of oxygen, medical equipment and medication in cities across the country. Outside homes, people have hung yellow and white flags to signal that they need food or medicine, while social media have been flooded with pleas for help and death notices.
“Myanmar is becoming a super-spreader of Covid-19 with these very virulent variants – Delta and other forms of the disease, [which are] extremely dangerous, extremely lethal, extremely contagious … This is very, very dangerous for all kinds of reasons,” Andrews said.
