Disasters

Pandemics

Govt eyes more cash handouts

The government is considering giving financial assistance to people affected by the latest outbreak of Covid-19, government sources revealed on Monday. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha on Monday met for talks with Deputy Prime Minister Supattanapong Punmeechaow and Finance Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith at Government House. Also present were ...

CHATRUDEE THEPARAT

Year in review: The winners and losers of 2020

As 2021 begins — not soon enough for most of us — we take one last look at the year that was. For Thailand, 2020 was a year of turmoil, disruption and contrasts. Simmering discontent boiled over for some in the form of protests, and the ...

CURTIS S CHIN & JOSE B COLLAZO

OPINON: Under cover of COVID, new laws in Asia threaten environmental and social protections

In addition to its devastating toll on public health, COVID-19 has exacerbated global food insecurity and economic crises. These costs have been particularly acute for Indigenous Peoples and local communities on customarily governed territories and lands. Yet some of the worst impacts have originated not from the crisis, but from ...

Kundan Kumar

Epidemic Reconstruction Reveals Gambling and Trafficking of Migrant Workers are Major Sources of Ongoing COVID-19 Spread 

As many as 45 provinces have been infected by the infection cluster first exploding among migrant workers communities in Samut Sakhon, while several more have been added to the list by the clusters involving gambling dens and local gambling such as cock fighting The disease control ...

B.Tribune

Thailand scrambles to contain outbreak, secure vaccines

For much of 2020, Thailand had the coronavirus under control. After a strict nationwide lockdown in April and May, the number of new local infections dropped to zero, where they remained for the next six months. Thailand closed its borders, enforcing mandatory quarantines for its own ...

BILL BREDESEN

Frontline medical staff vaccinated, more Covid-19 vaccines expected

Some frontline medical workers have been vaccinated against Covid-19 thanks to China’s provision of 2,000 doses of vaccine, the Minister of Health has said. The first round of vaccinations has been administered to volunteer medical staff, according to Associate Prof. Dr Bounkong Syhavong. “The vaccinations produced good ...

Souksakhone Vaenkeo

Hail the warriors in white gowns

In every crisis, there is a hero. And for the annus horibilis 2020, no one deserves the “Person of The Year” title more than the “Warriors in White Gowns” — a term which the public use to praise medical workers and over a million health ...

APINYA WIPATAYOTIN AND ANCHALEE KONGRUT

Myanmar Migrant Worker Says His Seafood Market Boss Started Chain of COVID-19 Infections

A Myanmar migrant worker in Thailand who became infected with the coronavirus said Wednesday that he contracted the illness from his Thai employer in a huge seafood market compound in coastal Samut Sakhon province near the capital Bangkok. On Monday, Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha and ...

Nayrein Kyaw for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

Finding community at a COVID-19 quarantine centre in Myanmar

In another world, I could have been checking into a hotel. Only instead of staff, two fellow COVID-19 patients welcomed me at the door, with a plastic box filled with toiletries, snacks and masks, and showed me to a small room I would share with another ...

Reuters

Anti-Myanmar hate speech flares in Thailand over virus

“Wherever you see Myanmar people, shoot them down,” read one Thai comment on YouTube after a surge of coronavirus cases among workers from Myanmar. The outbreak, first detected at a seafood market near Bangkok, has prompted a flare-up in such online hate speech as well as ...

Reporting by Shoon Naing in Yangon; Writing by Matthew Tostevin; Editing by Sam Holmes

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