BANGKOK (AP) – Carpenter Tun Nye has been unable to send money to his parents’ home in Myanmar for two months to help care for his 11-year-old son after Thai authorities shut down his work. concern for coronavirus.
No job has meant any income for him or his wife, who have been confined in one of the more than 600 labor camps dotted around Bangkok, living in a small room in a dilapidated building with boards and blankets for cover the missing windows.
In Thailand’s worst virus rise so far, blocking measures have reduced to zero what the poor poor in Bangkok did not have. Volunteer groups work to ensure their survival.
For 31-year-old Tun Nye, the bag of rice, canned fish and other commodities left by Bangkok Community Help volunteers meant not having to go hungry that week.
“It’s been three or four months without money and we don’t have enough to eat,” he said after picking up supplies. “And there’s no option to go home to Myanmar, it’s worse.”
The government closed the camps in late June after delta variant infection groups spread among workers living in the nearest area, further increasing a peak of COVID-19 in Thailand. Many lost all income and while employers were supposed to make sure they all had enough food and water, many did not.
“You would have a camp that had a lot of supplies, they were provided, and you walked 30 meters to another and they hadn’t seen their head in two weeks and they were told they were going fishing to eat,” Greg said. Lange, one of the co-founders of Bangkok Community Help, which offers about 3,000 hot meals a day and up to 600 “survival bags” like the one Tun Nye got.
Founded early in the pandemic last year, the organization has grown to over 400 Thai and foreign volunteers such as Lange, a 62-year-old Florida native who has lived in Thailand for two decades and is heavily dependent. measure of social relations. media to spread the word and ask for help.
Donations come from corporations, individuals and even governments. Some give meals they have prepared themselves, others packaged or in cash. Rice in survival packages recently distributed in the slums near Bangkok’s main commercial port facilities was paid for through Australian Aid; the apples were donated by the New Zealand-Thailand Chamber of Commerce.
When hospitals became so overcrowded that COVID-19 patients were unable to enter, volunteer doctors and others brought oxygen home, hoping to keep them alive long enough for an ICU bed to remain. free.
“We mainly tried to help people spend that time with food supplies, basic necessities, but suddenly we took care of lives, people were dying in our arms, literally,” the co-founder of Lange, Friso Poldervaart, a Dutchman who has lived in Thailand for more than a third of his 29 years.
“Fortunately, this situation is a little better now, there are more free beds and the government’s domestic isolation program works better, but we keep sending 20 to 30 people to the hospital every day, we keep administering oxygen.” He said.
New infections in Thailand have hovered around 15,000 in recent days after surpassing 23,400 in mid-August, while deaths from COVID-19 have remained high, with 224 reported on Sunday. The country has confirmed 1.2 million cases and more than 12,800 deaths from the pandemic.
The government hopes the country is now emerging from this deadliest wave of the pandemic, which has accounted for 97% of Thailand’s total cases and more than 99% of its deaths.
After a slow start to the highly criticized vaccines, around 35% of the population has received at least one shot and around 12% are fully vaccinated. In Bangkok, more than 90% have had one shot and more than 22% have had two.
“In terms of the number of cases, we see that it’s still high, but the trend is improving,” Dr. Taweesap Siraprapasiri, an epidemiologist who is a senior adviser to the government’s disease control department.
Locking restrictions relaxed last week and many construction projects have been lit in green to resume work, under close supervision.
Taweesap said many of the construction workers have now received at least a first dose of vaccine and that many jobs have begun to operate under what authorities have dubbed “bubble and stamp” regulations: a ” workers’ bubble is kept together and sealed from outside contact to prevent COVID-19 from entering or extending beyond the site.
“We’re also applying this concept to other jobs like factories,” he said.
When the camps were closed, a group of Bangkok residents formed the We Care For Ourselves group, saying it was immediately clear that many workers had been left in crisis situations.
They created an online platform to meet the needs of the camps with donations available to better target aid, sharing their information with Bangkok Community Help and other groups.
While things are getting better, group member Yuwadee Assavasrisilp said many unregistered workers are not yet vaccinated and as they spread about their group, they begin to hear more about ongoing needs. in the slums of the city.
When people test positive, they are forced to isolate themselves in their home, which usually means the virus spreads to family members, he said. And many are so poor that they escape isolation to work just to feed their families.
“Without the volunteers, we would have seen many more people die because they could not access the government system in time,” said Yuwadee, 32. “The number of volunteers in Thailand has been growing – this demonstrates the generosity of the people in Thailand during the crisis – but at the same time, it reflects the government’s great failure in managing this pandemic.”
A recent outbreak at Tun Nye camp, which housed a 112-man crew building a mansion for an oil tycoon, meant it had to remain closed longer than most, but the job was approved by reopening last week. He and his wife had the virus, but no serious symptoms and a negative test about a week ago means he can now go back to work.
“Everyone is waiting for him,” he said, with a smile wide enough to be visible through the surgical mask. “We’ve been without income for so long.”
For volunteer groups, it is just one more phase of a long pandemic.
Bangkok Community Help, along with the local government, last week opened a 52-bed isolation center at an elementary school, unused due to the pandemic. And over the weekend, volunteers thoroughly tested an entire neighborhood to get better data on infection rates.
“We don’t stop,” Poldervaart said. “We just adapt.”
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Associated Press journalists Chalida Ekvitthayavechnukul and Tassanee Vejpongsa contributed to this report.