Swiss UN staffer in Myanmar tests positive for coronavirus

Swiss UN staffer in Myanmar tests positive for coronavirus

She is the first foreign national to test positive; Myanmar now has eight confirmed cases

Health workers prepare to disinfect the Mya Yee Nandar housing in Mandalay after a resident tested positive for coronavirus on Friday (Photo: Yan Moe Naing/Myanmar Now)

A United Nations international staff member in Myanmar has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, with the country reporting its eighth confirmed case just after midnight on Saturday.

The 58-year-old Swiss national was admitted to a government hospital in the capital Naypyitaw on Thursday with a cough, sickness and diarrhea, the Ministry of Health and Sport announced.

She arrived in Naypyitaw from Geneva through Bangkok on March 18 and was quarantined at a hotel, the ministry said in a statement. 

The ministry also said that on March 13, while in Switzerland, she was in close contact for two hours with her father, who was also diagnosed with the Covid-19 disease. She developed symptoms on March 22.

 

 

While the health ministry did not say the patient’s profession, the UN office in Myanmar issued a statement a few hours after the government's confirming one of its international staff members had tested positive. 

"As the staff member began to experience symptoms consistent with Covid-19, (she) was taken to and isolated in a designated public hospital where the test was taken," said the statement.

 

 

The highly contagious virus has claimed more than 27,000 lives globally and infected just under 600,000 people, according to a tally updated Saturday.  

Myanmar, with its desperately underfunded healthcare system, has so far tested 324 people despite a call from the World Health Organisation to “test, test, test” for the virus. 

Among the eight individuals who tested positive for the novel coronavirus in Myanmar, the Swiss national is the first foreigner, though another patient is from Myanmar but holds US citizenship. 

One of the last patients is a 60-year-old tour guide who has not travelled overseas in the past two weeks before her diagnosis, according to the ministry. However, she travelled with French tourists locally, meaning she could be the first case of local transmission. 

Her symptoms include coughing and vomiting, and on Thursday she was admitted to Yangon General Hospital.

Another patient is a 29-year-old Myanmar citizen who recently came back from the UK. He travelled together to Barbados with another patient who was diagnosed on Wednesday. 

Hours before the health ministry's official announcement, a screenshot of the list of three latest patients identifying their names, ages and the hospitals where they are receiving treatment circulated on Facebook. It is not known who leaked the information. 

Myanmar announced its first two confirmed cases on March 23, making it one of the last few countries in the world to declare the presence of the virus.

Seven of the eight cases Myanmar has so far confirmed are imported, with the patients recently travelling from the US, UK, Australia, or Switzerland. 

Three patients are in their 50s or 60s, while the rest are in their 20s or 30s.

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A 14-year-old girl from Meiktila with a gunshot wound to the thigh was turned away from multiple hospitals on Wednesday before finally being admitted to the 1,000-bed Naypyitaw General Hospital the following day. 

The girl was shot in Gway Taukkon village in Mandalay’s Meiktila Township at around 9pm on Wednesday. She was walking back home from her parents’ betel nut shop, according to a family member. The relative added that it was not clear who fired the shot, or from where. 

A local charity group, the Pyithayar Social Association, took the girl to seven hospitals that night in both Meiktila and more than two hours away in Naypyitaw, but none would admit her. 

They included the military hospital and public hospital in Meiktila, the general hospital, the 200-bed hospital and the Sangha Hospital in Naypyitaw’s Lewe Township, and the 1,000-bed general hospital and the military hospital in the city of Naypyitaw.

Both the Meiktila and Naypyitaw military hospitals told them that they could not admit the girl because she was a civilian and not a soldier; other hospitals refused on the grounds that there were no anaesthetists on duty or that they lacked surgical equipment.  

Thura Lwin Oo, an official from the charity group, said that the Naypyitaw General Hospital urged them to take the girl to another hospital as they were overcrowded with Covid-19 patients.

“If a patient is transferred from one hospital to another, the first hospital must give us a letter of referral, but they just did it verbally. They just told us to go to some other hospitals, so we were forced to waste time on the road all night until dawn,” he said. 

On Thursday morning, Thura Lwin Oo posted about the situation on social media in a plea for help.

“I was afraid she would have to have her leg amputated if we took any longer. Her thigh was no longer bleeding, but I was afraid something would happen because the bullet was still inside,” he said.

On Thursday morning, the charity group was able to make contact again with the general hospital in Naypyitaw. 

“We had to call them again. When we arrived in Naypyitaw last night, no one answered the phone,” Thura Lwin Oo explained on Thursday. “This morning, I called the hospital again and they told me to come back.” 

At the time of reporting, the girl’s condition was stable. 

Since the February 1 coup in Myanmar, health workers have been widely participating in the general strike as part of the Civil Disobedience Movement aimed at toppling military rule. 

Public hospitals and clinics have been operating with fewer staff as a result of the strike, with some health workers providing care privately or in community-run clinics. 

The junta has claimed that military doctors and nurses have been filling in at public hospitals in order to provide regular services. The military council announced on Wednesday that hospitals in Meiktila District were operating as usual. 

Myanmar Now

Myanmar Now is an independent news service providing free, accurate and unbiased news to the people of Myanmar in Burmese and English.
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Tanker carrying jet fuel due to arrive in Yangon on Saturday 

It is unclear who will take delivery of the fuel, but it can be used for military aircraft

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Published on Jun 25, 2021
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A tanker ship carrying airplane fuel is scheduled to arrive in Yangon on Saturday after departing from Singapore’s Jurong Island on Tuesday, according to data from several marine tracking websites.

The Panama-registered tanker SANTYA is loaded with Jet A1 fuel, which can be used both for commercial aviation and military aircraft, documents seen by Myanmar Now showed. 

Activists from Justice for Myanmar last month condemned a similar shipment of fuel made by PetroChina International Singapore and said the company was “complicit in atrocities.”

It is unclear which company is supplying the new shipment and how much fuel will be delivered. The PetroChina shipment was 13,300 tonnes.  

Since seizing power on February 1, the coup regime has launched numerous indiscriminate airstrikes in Kachin, Kayah, Chin and Karen states, displacing tens of thousands of civilians in its bid to crush armed resistance to its rule.

The tanker is likely to discharge its cargo at Yangon’s Thilawa Port, which has terminals for bulk carriers and oil tankers. 

According to the marine tracking website FleetMon, the ship is operated by ENEOS Ocean Shipmanagement and previously called at Thilawa in April and May from Singapore.

A representative from ENEOS declined to comment on the shipment on Wednesday.

Justice for Myanmar spokesperson Yadanar Maung called on ENEOS to “immediately halt the shipment.”

“It is reckless of ENEOS to ship jet fuel to Myanmar while the illegal military junta is in power, conducting indiscriminate airstrikes, committing war crimes and crimes against humanity with total impunity,” Yadanar Maung told Myanmar Now. 

The spokesperson for the activist group pointed out that ENEOS is largely owned by Japanese financial institutions who have a duty to stop the company “from contributing to grave human rights violations in Myanmar.” 

Industry sources told Myanmar Now that the current shipment may have been arranged by Brighter Energy, a joint venture between Thailand’s PTT and Myanmar’s Kanbawza Group. 

They speculated that it also could have been set up by either Myat Myittar Mon Company, which is owned by the chair of Myanmar Petroleum Trade Association, or Puma Energy Asia Sun, a subsidiary of Puma Energy, which is majority-owned by the global commodities giant Trafigura. 

Myanmar Now was unable to confirm the sources’ suggestions.

Puma Energy, based in Singapore, started distributing aviation fuel under the name National Energy Puma Aviation Services as a joint venture with the state-owned Myanmar Petroleum Products Enterprise in 2015. 

On February 11 the company said it had suspended its operations in Myanmar following the coup for safety reasons, leaving its local partner to take over. 

The company also suspended petrol sales at Myitkyina airport in late May, saying its trucks were having difficulties reaching the area. 

The airport has been used by the military to launch airstrikes against the Kachin Independence Army, which recently attacked several trucks it suspected of carrying jet fuel.

Myanmar Now

Myanmar Now is an independent news service providing free, accurate and unbiased news to the people of Myanmar in Burmese and English.
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At least 20 soldiers killed and 1,000 villagers displaced during clash near Sagaing capital 

One resistance fighter was also killed in the clash near Monywa, the local People’s Defense Force said 

Myanmar Now
Published on Jun 24, 2021
The scene on Wednesday after eight homes were set on fire near the site of an ambush targeting a military truck (Supplied)

Local resistance fighters killed at least 20 soldiers and suffered one fatality during a clash at a village about 16 miles outside the Sagaing Region capital of Monywa on Tuesday.

The fighting started hours after about 50 regime troops arrived at Htayaw Kyin village in Yinmabin Township at around 8am and raided people’s homes, inspected their motorbikes and checked their phones. 

The military flew surveillance drones over the area later in the afternoon. Then at around 3pm, members of the local People’s Defense Force launched an attack against the soldiers. 

Regime troops retreated from the village during the attack but returned half an hour later when they encountered more resistance fighters outside, a PDF fighter told Myanmar Now.

“When the clash began, they went outside the village because they thought there would be fewer of us,” he said. “But when they saw there were a lot of us, they went inside and stationed themselves in the village.” 

The resistance fighters held their fire while the soldiers took cover in the village, allowing residents to flee, he added. “Once we guessed that there was enough time for everyone to be out of the village, we surrounded it.” 

The soldiers took cover in a high school, a monastery and a pagoda as the two sides exchanged fire for about three hours. 

“The pagoda was damaged–some pieces fell off,” the PDF fighter said. “There were even holes in the roofs of buildings in the village.”

Two military trucks came from Monywa to bring reinforcements but PDF fighters attacked them with explosives, causing multiple casualties, the PDF said. 

Survivors from among the reinforcements then went and set fire to eight houses near the site of the ambush, locals said. 

At 6:30pm, PDF fighters retreated, allowing the military to also retreat to a site about two miles from the village.

“Our members who were involved in the fight say at least 20 soldiers were killed in two locations,” the PDF fighter said.

One PDF fighter was shot in the head and killed while two others suffered injuries to their hands and legs, he added. 

The military deployed snipers and mortars during the clash.

“We’ll keep fighting until we succeed. We don’t accept the terrorist military at all, so we’ll just keep going,” the PDF fighter said.

On Wednesday morning, over 200 soldiers arrived at the village and took up posts at the school and the monastery.

“No one dares to go near the village. They’ve already destroyed a home along the road to the village,” a local resident said.

More than 1,000 people from Htayaw Kyin and nearby villages have been displaced by the occupying soldiers.

Villagers in Yinmabin Township were among the first to take up arms against the junta in April. 

Myanmar Now

Myanmar Now is an independent news service providing free, accurate and unbiased news to the people of Myanmar in Burmese and English.
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