Pandemics

The ongoing Covid-19 lockdown in Laos has been extended till June 19, according to a notice issued by the Prime Minister’s Office on Friday. The notice outlines a gradual loosening of lockdown measures, with certain strict measures to remain in place. Travel within localities that have not ...

For expatriates like me, an unexpected upside to life in Bangkok during the COVID-19 outbreak is that it has become significantly easier to hail a taxi. Before the pandemic, drivers would often ignore me or try to rip me off, thinking I was among the millions of ...

The official coronavirus death toll in the South-East Asian nation of Laos remained at zero until this month. Amid a rapidly spreading outbreak in neighbouring Thailand, the Laotian government sealed its borders and imposed a lockdown on April 22.  Everybody except for essential workers was required to stay home ...

Thailand’s COVID-19 task force also recorded 25 new deaths, bringing the total number of fatalities to 614 since the pandemic started last year. Excluding the jail clusters, Monday’s new cases of 2,782 are close to a record high of 2,839 recorded late last month. Thailand has administered ...

Yesterday, Thailand’s Department of Corrections announced that nearly 3,000 inmates at two prisons in Thailand’s capital had tested positive for COVID-19, amid the country’s ongoing outbreak of the virus. In a statement, the department said that 1,785 of the 3,274 inmates tested positive at Bangkok Remand Prison, which ...

As Myanmar’s national COVID-19 response collapses following a 1 February military coup, one ethnic armed organisation in the country’s north has quietly vaccinated 20,000 people in areas it governs, with support from across the border in China. The vaccines, produced by the Chinese company Sinovac Biotech, ...

Authorities in Laos have reported a significant Covid-19 outbreak near the notorious Kings Romans casino, whose Chinese owner is accused by the United States of trafficking people, wildlife and drugs. Officials said a cluster of cases in Tonpheung district was traced to people who illegally entered ...

The Australian government on May 7 signed an agreement with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) to contribute an additional A$4 million (US$3.15 million) to mitigate the impacts of Covid-19 on Cambodia’s economy and people, the UNDP said in a press release. The agreement took effect immediately, ...

Few outings to a nightclub can claim such dire consequences as the early-February gathering at N8, a windowless adult entertainment venue in an unsuspecting district of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. Two women, unwitting carriers of the more-infectious B.1.1.7 variant of Covid-19, also known as the ...

There has been a significant decline in the elephant population of Southern Thailand as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. In Phang Nga Province, which normally has more domesticated elephants than any other Southern Thailand province, the elephant population has dropped by a third of ...