YANGON—Myanmar saw a record high number of COVID-19 fatalities on Sunday with 41 new deaths, bringing the Southeast Asian country’s official death toll to 412—the third highest in ASEAN after Indonesia and the Philippines.
Sunday’s daily death toll was the highest Myanmar has reported since it detected its first case of the coronavirus in late March.
As of Sunday evening, the country had reported a total of 17,794 cases, the fourth highest among the 10 ASEAN countries, following the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore.
After its initial success in containing the virus during the first wave from late March to early August, Myanmar is reeling under a second wave of infections, with the number of new cases and deaths rising sharply each day since early September. Yangon, the country’s business hub, is the hardest-hit region so far, with more than half of the reported cases.
The city’s COVID-19 hospitals are bursting at the seams, as less than one third of the total cases have been discharged. The government is rushing to build field hospitals and temporary quarantine centers at government schools and housing complexes to handle the influx of cases.
City health officials have announced an “all-out” battle to contain the virus, imposing strict measures like ordering residents not to leave their homes except to buy food and other necessities. To implement a comprehensive “test, trace and isolate” policy, they are also using rapid test kits to boost testing numbers in order to break the chain of transmission. As of Sunday evening, the country had carried out more than 300,000 tests, according to the government.
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