Aung San Suu Kyi urged people today to stay inside this Christmas and New Year as Covid-19 continues its steady march around Myanmar.
Writing in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar, the State Counsellor pleaded with people not to join festive celebrations and reserved subtle chastisement for Yangon along with some praise for its seemingly better behaved sibling, Mandalay.
“At this time when New Year is approaching, and Christmas is approaching, don’t say to yourself ‘I’m going to have a nice party’ and have yourself a celebration,” she wrote.
“Just because you want to celebrate this time, I don’t want your future to be affected in a bad way. A loss for the people is a loss for the country. Therefore, at this time, I want you all to be extremely vigilant. Try to control yourselves.”
Yangon region has had 74 percent of the country’s Covid-19 cases and 92.7 percent of its deaths, she said.
“That is why we are repeating again and again that Yangon region should be extremely vigilant,” she said, adding that the situation is better in Mandalay “due to the participation of the people.”
There, she said, “we could say that the situation is under control.”
The Mandalay Region government on December 2 imposed stay-at-home orders on all townships in Mandalay city from December 5 to 18 after a spike in cases. Crowds have gathered daily at township General Administration Department offices since the order to obtain travel documents, raising fears of more cases.
Aung San Suu Kyi also emphasized the importance of economic recovery, although the Covid-19 restrictions—which do not have an end date—hinder any bounce back, while cases continue to rise anyway.
“Just like I said last week, the more the infection spreads, the more state revenues we need to spend. Therefore we will have less financial resources for economic recovery. If we spend more on one side, we will have less on the other side. This is something all of you can understand easily,” said the leader.
She added that she was “anxious that some might become careless thinking that the vaccines would soon be available.”
Other news in today’s Global New Light of Myanmar included the re-launch on December 7 of the Yangon Water Bus service, which will give passengers a free mask each and plans to run a sunset cruise.
