(Rupa
Singi’s post from her FACEBOOK pages on July 15, 2021.)
There are 231 corpses at Yay-way Cemetery, 103 at Kyi-zuu, and 420 at Htain-bin for cremation. Most of the dead bodies are wrapped in Blankets and bed-sheets and Thin-byu mats as the coffin shortage also is happening in parallel to the Oxygen shortage.
According to unconfirmed rumors even the neighboring
Thailand had to send 26-vehicle-convoy of 20-tons liquid-oxygen tankers to
Burma to alleviate the fatal oxygen shortage in the country.
During the CIVID
second wave last year Yangon had more than 9000 oxygen cylinders and also a few
oxygen generators supplying liquid oxygen to hospitals to fill 4,500 oxygen cylinders
per day for ICU patients. The COVID positive rate then was around 2000 a day
and only 20 % of the positive patients needed oxygen.
Plan then was to provide 400 cylinders per day for 10 days continuous supply nationwide. Back then that was more than enough and there was no oxygen shortage. But now was different situation especially with the military junta running the country and most of the senior health beaurcrats and doctors in either jail or exile.
Department of Health Director Dr Htar Htar Lin who led the COVID vaccine program last year and managed to bring million doses of CoviShield (AstraZeneca) from India was recently arrested by the military and put in Insein jail. She and another prominent doctor the head of RGH infectious ward Dr Maw Maw Oo were infected with Delta COVID while in Insein Prison.
Now the third wave has arrived with new COVID variant from neighboring India and the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted that Myanmar could have more COVID death rate per capita than the neighboring India.
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| Do not worry, our eldest is queing to get Oxygen while our youngest is queing at ATM to get cash for that Oxygen! |
Rangoon Overwhelmed by escalating Indian COVID death toll
For more than
one week, three Yangon-based social welfare groups say they have assisted in
organising around 600 cremations and funeral services every day, as Covid-19
infections surge amid a dysfunctional post-coup health infrastructure.
The department of health under the junta is widely
believed to have underreported the country’s Covid-related deaths, claiming
that there have been a total of more than 700 nationwide in the first 13 days
of July.
“Many have died
due to hypoxia. It’s worse in the elderly and those with underlying conditions.
But it all boils down to the pandemic, after all. It’s not easy to even get a
coffin or a stretcher. Everything’s extremely scarce now,” a spokesperson from
Yangon’s Bo Sein Social Services said.
Local representatives for the three organisations Myanmar Now spoke with said that their groups normally have the collective capacity to hold funeral services for 100 deceased persons per day.
“Normally, our group would only have to deal with
20 to 25 bodies a day, but now it’s become more than 45 to 50 these days, and
sometimes we have even had to close our office,” the spokesperson of a social
welfare group in North Okkalapa said, adding that there are new social service
teams emerging to help cope with the crisis. He chose not to identify the name
of his organisation, due to security concerns.
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| Long cremation que at Yay-way Cemetey in Rangoon. |
The outreach groups are sending the bodies to four cemeteries, including Yay Way in North Okkalapa Township, Htein Pin in Hlaing Tharyar, Kyi Su in South Dagon and Kyu Chaung in Shwepyitha.
A local man who
was at the Yay Way cemetery for two hours on Wednesday said that he witnessed
the cemetery overcrowded with carts carrying coffins, waiting for their turn to
bury or cremate the dead. He noted that all three incinerators in the
crematorium were operating non-stop to cope with the unprecedented number of
bodies.
He told Myanmar
Now that he saw around 50 bodies awaiting cremation, and that the parking lot
was crowded with the cars of people attending funeral services and those from
social service organisations assisting with the burials.
Another member
of a Yangon-based social welfare group said that the logistics of arranging so
many burials and funeral services had become difficult, with the cemetery
becoming a chaotic place. “Cremation takes time and for that reason alone, it’s
really hard to get to the families on time [to collect the bodies of their
loved ones],” he explained.
Myanmar Now
contacted the municipal authorities regarding the increase in Covid-19 deaths,
but they would not provide public comment on the situation. Myanmar Now
previously reported that Covid-19 patients were dying at an unprecedented rate
due to the unavailability of medical oxygen.
Sources at oxygen factories in Yangon said that the
junta had ordered that the gas be exclusively supplied to Covid-19 centres run
by the military council, and have prohibited both private and state-owned
producers from distributing to individuals.
Junta spokesperson Zaw Min Tun confirmed on Monday
that the military had, in fact, restricted private oxygen plants from selling
oxygen to the general public amidst the third wave of the pandemic. “We admit it. All the hospitals and clinics
are full. All the quarantine centers are full and we can’t receive patients
anymore,” Zaw Min Tun said in a press conference in Naypyitaw.
Demands for oxygen have been at an all-time high, as the virus affects patients’ ability to breathe. Representatives of social service teams said that people in Yangon have been paying as much as 350,000 to 400,000 kyat (US$210-240) for a 40-liter tank of oxygen.