Category: Mission Journal

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.

What’s closed and what’s not?

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Some stores are open and some are closed in Phnom Penh. There’s no clear policy on closing and staying at home. Click here to see some examples.

The healthcare system in Cambodia is not very robust. Medical professionals often lack extensive training and the general populace has little understanding of basic health and hygiene concepts. COVID-19 is established in the country (we have 119 confirmed infections as of today) but the idea of a virus and how it is transmitted is not well understood. Not knowing what a virus is, the presumption is that evil spirits are causing the disease and so families and villages set up scarecrow-like ting mongs to frighten away the evil spirits.