Six months after the 1 Feb coup, hypervigilance has become a survival skils for many people in Myanmar. But with the junta in power and the National Unity Government trying to get better footing, they are mostly on their own in the ‘double trouble’ of COVID-19 emergency and the coup crisis.

Tình hình COVID-19 tại Myanmar đang trong tình trạng khẩn cấp và biến đổi nhanh chóng, tệ hơn những gì chúng ta biết. Reporting ASEAN đã phỏng vấn tổ chức Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) để có bức tranh toàn cảnh.

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွင်း ကိုဗစ်-၁၉ ကပ်ရောဂါဟာ ရုတ်တရက် အရေးပေါ်အန္တရာယ်ကျရောက်မည့် အခြေအနေကို ရောက်ရှိ နေပြီ ဖြစ်တယ်။ လတ်တလော ကျွနှု်ပ်တို့သိရှိထားတဲ့ အခြေအနေတွေထက် အလွန့်အလွန် ပိုမို ဆိုးရွားလာနိုင်ဖွယ်ရှိ နေတယ်။

Myanmar’s pandemic-hit communities are trying to fend for themselves as the country’s health system, already crippled after the Feb 1 coup, crumbles under a third outbreak of COVID-19. But the country needs a much stronger response, not to mention a functioning government.

The pandemic in Myanmar is an emergency that is unfolding swiftly, and is much, much worse than what we know at the moment. Reporting ASEAN speaks to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to get a better picture of the situation.

Resignation, frustration mix as Southeast Asians find that their countries are back in lockdowns. But vaccination is underway, covering larger proportions of people in Singapore and Indonesia, than in the Philippines and Thailand.

COVID-19 may have forced Singapore and Malaysia to address the appalling living conditions of migrant workers they host. But larger and wider problems such as the lack of social protection, as well as discrimination that has become worse during the pandemic, persist.

สถานการณ์โควิด-19 ทำให้สิงคโปร์และมาเลเซียจำต้องหันมาดูแลสภาพความเป็นอยู่ที่น่าอนาถของแรงงานข้ามชาติในประเทศ แต่ปัญหาที่ใหญ่และหนักกว่านั้นก็ยังคงอยู่ เช่นไม่มีการปกป้องทางสังคม และมีการกีดกันเพิ่มขึ้นในช่วงโรคระบาดนี้

Check out our charts to know how the vaccination drive is playing out: How many vaccine doses have been administered in the region? What’s the share of their population that has been fully vaccinated? How willing are people to be vaccinated? Which vaccines are which countries using?

Thailand, whose pandemic management has earned praises, looks to do mass vaccination from June and produce vaccines for local use and for export.

Our two data visualisations  provide a year-long perspective of how Southeast Asia responded to COVID-19 in terms of stringency measures. COVID-19 was officially declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization on Mar 11, 2020.

Eight months after it lost its franchise to operate in the Philippines’ polarised political setting, the country’s largest network is disproving the sceptics who say legacy media are too clumsy to pivot to digital.

“I don’t consume wildlife stuff, so how can eating meat relate to the pandemic?’ If you have asked this before, you will want to dig into this Q&A with ADB environmental specialist Francesco Riccardi.

The results of a Reporting ASEAN survey give interesting views into how Southeast Asians interact with news and misinformation, including amid COVID-19. Plus – a total of 99% said they had ‘average’ to ‘excellent’ skills  in judging the reliability of content.

အယ်လ်ကာလိုင်းပါတဲ့ အစားအစာတွေဟာ ကိုဗစ်-၁၉ ကနေ သင့်ကို ကာကွယ်ပေးပါတယ်ဆိုတဲ့ မဟုတ်မဟတ် ရေးထားတာကို မှတ်မိပါသလား။ အလျင်အမြန် ပျံ့နှံ့သွားခဲ့တဲ့ အဲဒီသတင်းကို အခု ဆောင်းပါးပါ ‘ခြေရာခံလိုက်ထား’ ပုံကိုကြည့်ရင် အချက်အလက်စစ်ဆေးရတဲ့ အလုပ်ဟာ အခက်အခဲတွေများပြားသလောက် တစ်ဖက်ကလည်း ဆက်လက်လုပ်ဆောင်နေရမယ်ဆိုတာ သိနိုင်ပါတယ်။

Numbers are important, but so is context. Click here to view data visualisation charts around trends in the COVID-19 pandemic in Southeast Asia. A Reporting ASEAN collaboration with Yvonne Chua. 

BANGKOK, 21 Aug (Reporting ASEAN) – Green recovery. Social protection. Smart containment. Decarbonization. Putting progress in climate action at par with measuring GDP. Creative capacity.

Seafarers make up bulk of Filipino workers returning home without jobs amid COVID-19. But home isn’t the best the place to be – many face stigma, and the Philippine economy is in dire straits. Filipinos make up a third of cruise ship staff worldwide. By the Reporting ASEAN team.

‘Space’ has acquired a new meaning, and value in the COVID-19 era, given the restrictions on mobility in a public health emergency. Two Indonesian architects rethink the home as a community of sorts, not as a hideout shaped by fear. Kanis Dursin reports.