Ethnic groups step in as Myanmar’s COVID response is falling Coronavirus pandemic News

As the COVID-19 response in Myanmar falls after a military coup on February 1, an armed ethnic organization in the north of the country has deployed 20,000 people in areas that quietly govern, with cross-border support from China.

The Chinese company Sinovac Biotech has been produced by the Chinese Red Cross Association with the support of members of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

KIO is one of 20 ethnic armed organizations operating across Myanmar’s borders with China, Thailand and India. Many of them have corrected their COVID-19 responses since the beginning of the pandemic.

Despite the escalation of unrest and civil wars since the coup, the KIO and Karen National Union (KNU), two of the country’s most established ethnic armed organizations, have told Al Jazeera to stay as long as possible.

Their ongoing COVID-19 response to the collapse of Myanmar’s national health care system – already one of the weakest in the world before the coup. A few days after the coup, government health workers launched the Civil Disobedience Movement, which has now taken over the country, paralyzing military rule and starving generals of resources. Many hospitals are closed or barely functioning.

On May 5, the United Nations in Myanmar warned that attacks on doctors and facilities were threatening the COVID-19 response.

“At a time when Myanmar needs them most, health workers fear arrest or detention for exercising their rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” it says in a statement.

According to the UN, the army has carried out at least 158 ​​attacks on doctors and facilities, and more than 60 people have been injured or killed. It has also arrested and charged more than 139 doctors and occupied at least 50 health centers.

Dr. Khin Khin Gyi, head of the Infectious Diseases Unit of the Ministry of Health, told Voice of America in early April that the daily test rates had dropped to less than 2,000 a day from 25,000 tests before the coup.

The reported cases have since dropped.

As of Jan. 31, the country had documented more than 140,000 cases and 3,131 deaths and reported hundreds of new cases every day. Since the coup, however, there have been only 2,700 new cases – an average of about 30 a day – and 79 deaths have been reported.

“The perfect storm”

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Moon warned on April 1 that there is a potential “perfect storm” and that the outbreak of the coronavirus could coincide with the country’s humanitarian crisis. No outbreaks have been reported in Myanmar since the coup, with major new waves of the virus in India and Thailand.

On Myanmar’s southeastern border with Thailand, the UNHCR, founded in 1947 and merged with the Ceasefire Agreement in 2015, has led the Emergency Pandemic Working Group in its seven districts since March 2020.

Saw Diamond Khinen, head of KNU’s Karen Health and Welfare Department, says testing capabilities are limited – up to 18 tests a day, and in one place – but among those tested, only three cases have been identified in the pandemic.

He told Al Jazeera that population movement was minimal until the coup. “People have not traveled much during the pandemic to go to or return to farms. Our area is mountainous; people come out of town only to buy items like salt. ‘

The blow, however, has drastically increased the movement to KNU areas.

In February, the KNU offered its support to protesters against the coup, and thousands of dissidents and striking government workers have sought refuge in its territory. Others are arriving from cities to train to take up arms against the military government.

“Before the coup, communities lived separately. We didn’t cross from town to town. Now, people are running here and there, “Saw Diamond Khin said.” The main thing is that people from the cities come to us. We first register and send them to a quarantine center. ” The escalating airstrikes and clashes have forced at least 40,000 civilians out of their homes, many of them hiding in the jungle.

The elected government began promoting the vaccine a few days before the coup – using landlords provided by India. Since taking over the military, the system has collapsed [File: Lynn Bo Bo/EPA]

The elected government of Myanmar began vaccinating people five days before the coup, using the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine provided by India. By the end of the year, it was set to reach 40 percent of the country’s 54 million population.

On April 23, military-controlled media reported that more than 1.5 million people had received the first dose, but only 300,000 people had received the second. Many people, including those hiding in a labor strike in fear of being arrested, have boycotted a second dose and left 1.6 million doses of the vaccine unused, according to the Burmese BBC.

In a statement on May 6, the Ethnic Health Commission, an alliance of ethnic organizations across Myanmar, described an “increased health emergency” since the coup.

He called on ethnic health organizations and participants in the civil disobedience movement to increase international support for health services outside military health structures, and for neighboring countries to accept COVID-19 vaccines in ethnic areas “as a humanitarian gesture and to protect their populations from the pandemic.”

Saw Nay Htoo, a spokesman for the commission, told Al Jazeera that even before the coup, the military was actively working on ethnic COVID-19 responses, but now the regime’s restrictions on mobile data and communication networks have further hampered ethnicity. the effort of health organizations. Although many health workers have fled central Myanmar to ethnic areas, funding and medical equipment are in short supply.

“The entire international health operation has been suspended,” he said.

Chinese border

The KIO, which has been fighting for self-determination since 1961, maintains its territory near China’s Yunnan Province. Like the KNU, it runs its own system of government in its territories.

China Red Cross volunteers in Longchuan County are conducting COVID tests at a quarantine center in the town of Mai Ja Yang in March 2021 in a KIO-controlled area. [Yawng Htang/Al Jazeera]

Since the ceasefire agreement with the military fell in 2011, fighting has displaced more than 100,000 people, 39,000 of whom live in KIO-controlled areas. The conflict has been quiet since 2018, prompting some displaced people to return home, but since March fighting has flared up again. At least 5,000 civilians have fled their homes every day amid riots and airstrikes.

The KIO launched its COVID-19 response in early February 2020, more than a month before Myanmar announced its first coronavirus case, and began testing in April with kits issued by China and Singapore.

It can perform 600 tests a day and has tested more than 10,000 people in its territories, of which only 20 have been positive cases; None of the internal transmissions, HIO Wawm says, is the head of KIO’s COVID-19 response committee.

He told Al Jazeera that the commission has continued uninterrupted since the coup, but is no longer able to set up checkpoints to monitor movement in conflict-affected areas or coordinate with hospitals outside its territory.

A vaccine for people in KIO-controlled areas, offered to all people between the ages of 18 and 60, in what the Chinese state media called a “massive vaccination” in four counties and cities in Yunnan province bordering Myanmar. April.

China’s first outbreak since February affected the border city of Ruili, and on March 30 and 31, China’s National Health Commission identified 60 positive cases, including 16 Myanmar citizens.

About 17 million crossings were made between Ruili and the city of Shan State in Myanmar in 2019, but Yunnan province has banned people from coming to Myanmar at the start of the pandemic.

Ruili authorities appear to have stepped up border patrols since the coup, and deployed more civil servants and state sector workers to the area, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Children play next to the fence that marks the border between Myanmar’s Kachin State and China’s Yunnan Province. The fence was put in place during the pandemic to prevent border crossings [File: Ring Nu Awng/Al Jazeera]

King’s Hing Wawm told Al Jazeera that the Chinese Red Cross Association has so far given approximately 15,000 doses of vaccine and that when more shipments arrive the vaccine will be offered to all residents of KIO-controlled territories. Volunteers from the Longchuan County Red Cross Association, along the Kachin State border located in Yachin province, were vaccinated.

A leader of the Nhkawng Pa community, one of 18 camps for displaced people in the conflict, in KIO-controlled areas, told Al Jazeera that some camp residents were initially skeptical about the vaccine, but after receiving information from KIO health volunteers, the best population managed to shoot 1,600 people.

But a resident of the Woi Chyai camp, which was home to 7,500 people, said he and many others were still holding on. “I haven’t received a COVID-19 vaccine yet, because [the KIO] said it has been issued by China and does not yet have WHO approval. They also told us they were testing it, ”he told Al Jazeera.

CoronaVac, an inactivated virus vaccine, has conducted three-phase clinical trials in Brazil and Indonesia, among others, and has been administered more than 260 million times worldwide.

The WHO is examining its possible use for worldwide use with a decision expected earlier this week.

Businesses backed by China and the Chinese have long exploited land and natural resources in Myanmar.

Since the coup, while China used the veto power of the UN Security Council to block actions against the elected generals who seized power from the government, negative feelings towards China have only grown among the people of Myanmar.

In early May, the Chinese military donated 500,000 doses of its vaccine to the military in a demonstration, according to the Chinese embassy in Yangon, due to a long-standing relationship between the two countries pauk-phaw (brotherhood).