As Covid-19 Protocols Breached, Concerns Over Lack of Transparency

 VOD, Nov. 6, 2020

Ouk Chansomavattey, a 56-year-old street vendor in Phnom Penh, says she had hoped that government officials would set a good example when it came to Covid-19.

She always washes her hands, and encourages others to do the same. She fears that if the disease finally gains a foothold in the country, Cambodia’s run of having been largely spared — there have been no official deaths from Covid-19 — would come to an end.

“Our country is too small,” she says. “Please tighten up restrictions.”

For now, the run officially continues. Hundreds of people have been tested since Wednesday after a visiting Hungarian foreign minister was found to have the disease after he left Cambodia. All the tests as of Friday morning have come back negative, according to the Health Ministry.

Richard Coker, a Bangkok-based emeritus professor of public health for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says Cambodia, like its neighbors, remains a mystery.

“It just doesn’t make sense. You look at Sihanoukville — it’s basically a Chinese city,” Coker says, explaining that it has had ample opportunity to have the virus take root.

In full: https://vodenglish.news/as-covid-19-protocols-breached-concerns-over-lack-of-transparency/

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