Six days ago, when postponing the celebration of the Khmer New Year, the government announced an inter-province travel ban to end at midnight tonight. In an attempt to prevent the spread of COVID-19 around the country, no one except authorized and emergency people were to cross provincial lines. I heard early on that people were going through the checkpoints, and yesterday the newspaper confirmed it. Then today the ban was lifted at 6:00 AM. That’s the kind of scenario that frightens me about the period to come if the virus–progressing slowly so far–makes a jump into a significant portion of the population.