Category: Mission Journal

COVID-19 Notes

Most of the dwellings in Phnom Penh are shophouses like the one above, three or four-story buildings one room wide, with a ground floor shop opening onto the street and the family’s living quarter behind and above the shop. Now to keep customers, who may be infected, out of their homes, many of the shops have put up string barriers which allow for sales but prevent people from entering the shop. The two shops below have similar strings blocking people from walking in.

COVID-19 Notes

The latest coronavirus fashion fad is sewing a plastic visor onto a regular hat you can get in any market. Do the visors help, especially when you’re wearing a mask? Who knows. One thing for sure, you’d get the same effect and a lot more security if you wore a helmet with a visor! And you’d be following the law!

COVID-19 Notes

Another sign of the times: a bank has installed a sink with running water outside its entrance so people will wash their hands–and use the disinfectant on the sink–before entering the building. Just be careful not to trip over the drain hose.

Worrying Trend

This is a report from the online edition of Fresh News, a pro-government newspaper in Cambodia. It notes that today for the fifth consecutive day there were no new cases of COVID-19 infection in the kingdom, and of the 122 previously identified cases only 19 remain in hospital. If the trend continues, we will soon be approaching the record of what must be the best health care system in the world–North Korea–which reports no known infections in that kingdom.