Inflation in the small, land-locked nation of Laos has been spiraling for the last few months, shooting up by nearly 40% at the end of 2022 as a new prime minister tries to calm concerns about rising costs.
The country’s National Statistics Bureau reported year-to-year inflation of nearly 39.3% in December 2022, up from 38.5% the month before, making it the highest among the Association for Southeast Asian Nations members.
In response, Lao authorities ordered the closing of all money exchange outlets and are now allowing only banks to exchange foreign currencies. The government is also banning the importation of several domestically produced goods, including some vegetables, eggs, pork, beef and fish.
Trade officials told RFA that authorities were forced to take harsh economic measures because Laos has been suffering a massive trade deficit, hitting a whopping $926 million in 2022.
“We are planning to reduce the import of goods and to promote domestic production,” a trade official from Savannakhet province told RFA’s Lao Service on the condition of anonymity. “We already have a lot of goods produced here in the country, but the problem is that our consumers prefer imported goods to domestic ones.”
Rising inflation presents a test for new prime minister Sonexay Siphandone, who began his new term this year promising to “raise the spirit of the revolution to the highest level.” Top economic officials are hoping for a recovery in tourism and a loosening of travel restrictions, particularly from China.
Authorities have banned imports of cabbage, garlic, lettuce, broccoli, onion, chilly, celery, eggs, pork, duck, beef, tilapia, and all other freshwater fish. Laos’s cabinet agreed on the import ban during a Dec. 24 meeting, the Lao Pattana newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, Laos’s central bank issued a notice on Jan. 13 revoking all permits for money exchangers in the country.
Impact on citizens
Many lower-income earners in Laos’s capital Vientiane and across the country have grown even poorer and have less to spend on food, healthcare and education.
More young Laotians are moving to Thailand to find work, with the Migrant Working Group, a Thai-based NGO, estimating that more than 50,000 people moved from Laos to Thailand for work in the last year, with about 250,000 Laotians working in the country legally.
Nearly half a million Laotians are estimated to be working in Thailand without permits. Several workers RFA spoke with said that they moved because they couldn’t find work in Laos.
“The [import] ban will be affecting our livelihoods, but we have to have some domestic production,” one Lao economist told RFA. “If our prices are lower than imported goods, then our people will consume our products.”
Similarly, an employee of an import-export company based in Vientiane told RFA that the company has been “suffering from low sales because products are getting more and more expensive, too expensive for many Laotians.”
While the import ban is going into effect, it is unclear if domestic production of the banned goods will be enough to supply Laos’s market.
Translated by Max Avary. Edited by Nawar Nemeh and Jim Snyder.
Myanmar and Thailand have reopened a major border crossing after a three-year hiatus.
The Myawaddy-Mae Sot Friendship Bridge, which connects Thailand’s western Tak province with Kayin state’s Myawaddy township in Myanmar’s east, resumed operations on Thursday for the first time since 2020, when the two countries closed their borders due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Several Thai and Myanmar officials met on the bridge at 7:30 Thursday morning for a reopening ceremony. Traffic across the bridge formally reopened at 8:30, according to the Myanmar National Portal website.
A resident who attended the event told RFA’s Burmese Service that hundreds of people from both sides came to watch.
Nay Win, who was the first person to enter Thailand through the bridge on Thursday, said he was given a seven-day border pass to stay in the country after submitting his COVID-19 vaccination record, and 3,000 kyat (U.S.$1.43).
“I am happy [to be back],” he said.
A reopening ceremony was held for the Myanmar-Thai Friendship Bridge No. 1, which links Myawaddy in Kayin state and Mae Sot in Thailand’s Tak Province, on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023. Credit: Kitimasak Aek Seeduan via Facebook
The reopening of the land border is expected to benefit the economy for both countries.
“The important thing is that trade, education and healthcare will improve,” said Thin Thin Myat, the president of the Thai-Myanmar Chamber of Commerce.
She said that there will be health centers to check for COVID at the entrance and exit of the two countries. Those who can show the proper documentation will be allowed to visit the other side for seven days.
The reopening is good for the people of Myanmar, according to Htoo Chit, a Myanmar labor rights advocate in Thailand.
“During the closure, the migrants and visitors had to pay more than ten times the regular fees in order to come to Thailand,” said Htoo Chit. “Some had to enter illegally and ended up arrested, in jail or deported. Now they can come legally and officially.”
A total of 786 border crossings occurred on the first day of reopening, with 40 Thais and 300 Burmese departing Thailand across the bridge, and 35 Thais and 411 Burmese entering Thailand, according to Thai immigration statistics.
Since the military coup in Myanmar, the Thai-Myanmar border town of Myawaddy has seen frequent bombings. On the night of Oct. 15, 2022, a bomb exploded near the Myawaddy-Mae Sot bridge and at least two cars were destroyed by fire.
Nay Win shows his passport stamp after being the first to cross the Myanmar-Thai Friendship Bridge No. 1 in three years. Credit: RFA
The long-anticipated reopening was originally announced for May 1, 2022, but was repeatedly delayed.
Before the bridge reopening, some workers and goods were able to pass through a second Thai-Myanmar bridge roughly 8 kilometers (5 miles) north under an agreement that sought to bolster Thailand’s labor market with workers from Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
However, advocacy groups said high fees from brokers to arrange paperwork for the process meant it was an insufficient opportunity for the masses looking for a stable income in the lagging economy.
Those unable to wait for the reopening were left to come through irregular routes across the 2,400 kilometer border, often with the aid of brokers.
Moe Kyaw of the Joint Action Committee for Burmese Affairs says creating more legal migration paths can help reduce risk and leave fewer people open to abuses.
Of the four permanent land borders, the only other open checkpoint is further south in Kawthaung, Myanmar. However, only locals with passes and access to a boat can legally come into Thailand.
Myanmar citizens living in Mae Sot see the border reopening not as an economic boon but as a chance to connect with loved ones they’ve been separated from.
Samuel, who came to the opening ceremony on the Thai side, and asked to go by his first name only, has been watching preparations for the opening all week. Although he expects to stay in Thailand because of the coup, now he can at least visit his home country.
“It will bring more convenience for Burmese people,” Samuel said. “I’m trying to go to Myawaddy just to meet my friend.”
Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Rights groups and Uyghurs living abroad have strongly condemned a visit to Xinjiang this week by a delegation of Muslim scholars and clerics from developing nations who voiced support for China’s policies in the far-western region, saying they turned a blind eye to the suffering of persecuted Uyghurs.
The group of more than 30 Islamic representatives from 14 countries — including the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Serbia, South Sudan and Indonesia — arrived in Xinjiang on Jan. 8 to visit the cities of Urumqi, Turpan, Altay and Kashgar and to meet with government officials.
Statements by the head of the delegation, Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, sparked widespread anger from Uyghurs abroad and a strong reaction from U.S.-based Muslim organizations, including the Council on American Islamic Relations and Justice for All.
Al Nuaimi, chairman of the UAE-based World Muslim Communities Council, and others met with Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, and Erkin Tunuyaz, the region’s chairman, who both thanked them for their support of China’s Xinjiang policy.
Al Nuaimi was quoted by state media as praising efforts by Chinese authorities to eliminate terrorism and extremism in Xinjiang as the correct way to protect China’s national interests and people.
Muslims in China also must be loyal to the country, contribute to its social development, live in harmony with others, and take pride in being Chinese, he said in an interview with China’s Xinhua official news agency on Friday.
“Here we look at all Muslims as Chinese. They should be proud of Chinese nationals,” Al Nuaimi was quoted as saying in a report by China’s CGTN on Wednesday.
China’s Xinjiang policy has included intrusive surveillance, religious restrictions, the destruction of mosques, arbitrary arrests, and the detention of an estimated 1.8 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in a vast network of internment camps and prisons. Some have been subjected to sexual assaults, forced labor and forced sterilizations.
Though the United States and other Western nations have denounced China’s actions, major Muslim countries have defended the Xinjiang policy, as a result of Beijing’s economic and diplomatic power and their increasing indebtedness to China, critics said.
“Unfortunately, due to the benefit they get from China, the Muslim world is ignoring China’s atrocity toward Uyghurs and not seeing its ethnic genocidal crime, said Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish writer and journalist who is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.
“They are willing to accept China’s interpretation and trying to improve their relations with China,” he said.
Maya Wang, associate director in the Asia division at Human Rights Watch, said the Chinese government has used Muslim governments and Islamic scholars to whitewash its abuses.
“The fact that these governments and scholars seemed to turn a blind eye towards the their brothers’ and sisters’ right to practice their religion, namely Islam, is very disappointing, but then I think it is a symptom to the fact that the Chinese government exerts enormous political influence over these countries, governments, and even individuals’ careers.”
In its “World Report 2023” issued this week, which reviews human rights practices in nearly 100 countries, Human Rights Watch noted that while some Uyghurs have been released from internment camps, Chinese authorities have also sentenced an estimated 500,000 people, many of whom remain imprisoned.
Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, chairman of Justice for All, told RFA on Wednesday that the visit by the Muslim delegation is part of the Chinese government’s effort to cover up its repression of the Uyghurs.
“First of all, China is on a mission to confuse the Muslim world about what is happening to Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic groups in China,” he said.
“China’s organization of this visit is nothing but to cover their destruction of Uyghurs under the banner of opposing terrorism, radicalism and separatism,” he said.
Ma Xingrui, Communist Party secretary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region , meets with Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi, chairman of the World Muslim Communities Council, in Urumqi, capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang region. Credit: Xinjiang Daily
‘Still trying to deceive the world’
Others criticized Al Nuaimi directly for his comment supporting China’s Xinjiang policy.
Robert McCaw, director of government affairs at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told RFA that Al Nuaimi’s statements were disappointing and that he “distorted reality.”
“His statement doesn’t match the reality that Uyghur and other Turkic people are experiencing,” McCaw said. “These Arab and Muslim leaders participated in the Chinese-style Potemkin village propaganda visit.”
“We know the Chinese authorities continue to surveil Muslims, lock them up in prisons and concentration camps, continue forcing them to work as slave labor and assault them physically and sexually,” he said.
RFA contacted Ali Rashid Al Nuaimi and Mohamed Bechari, general secretary of the World Muslim Communities Council, for comment, but did not receive a response.
Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, condemned the scholars’ visit, calling it a betrayal of “millions of suffering Muslims.”
“China, by inviting so-called World Muslim Communities Council leaders to the Uyghur region, is still trying to deceive the world,” he said. “It is a fact that China has been engaging in a genocidal policy toward Uyghurs, and at the same time, China declared war against Islam.”
“This delegation’s visit is a betrayal of Islam [and] the holy book, the Quran’s, teachings,” he said.
Nury Turkel, chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom said the visit is “a well-staged attempt on the part of the Chinese government to challenge and undermine international criticism of the government’s human rights abuses in the region, including genocide and religious freedom violations.”
“The Chinese government could then use such a visit by foreign Islamic scholars to legitimize or even bolster its draconian policies in Xinjiang,” he said in a statement.
The Unites States and the parliaments of some Western countries have declared China’s abuses in Xinjiang amount to genocide and crimes against humanity. In an August 2022 report, the U.N.’s human rights office said serious rights violations had been committed in the context of counter-extremism strategies that “may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
Zumrat Dawut, a Uyghur now living in the U.S. who was interned in a “re-education” camp and was forcibly sterilized by authorities in Xinjiang, posted on her Facebook page comments by Uyghurs that she downloaded from the short video platform TikTok, expressing anger over the delegations visit and support for Chinese policies in the region.
“Yeah, we are extremely happy!” said one comment written in Chinese, as were the others. “We are happy to death,” said another. “Praise to the government for doing successful propaganda,” said a third.
Translated by RFA Uyghur. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Edited by Paul Eckert.
The Japan Coast Guard on Friday concluded security drills to train its Malaysian counterpart on how to repel foreign intruders in the disputed South China Sea where Beijing has grown increasingly assertive against other claimant states. The four-day exercise marked the first time Malaysia was trained in using long-range acoustic devices, called sound cannons, said Saiful Lizan Ibrahim, Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency’s deputy director of logistics.
“The drill was conducted to train the officers and members on how to use the device and also to test its effectiveness against foreign ships, especially the ones that intrude into the country’s waters,” Saiful said in a statement.
“It is to be used to chase away intruder ships that refuse to cooperate or the ones that are acting aggressively toward us.”
Long-range acoustic devices are specialized loudspeakers that can produce sounds at high power to communicate across vast distances. They are an upgrade from the devices used in Malaysia.
The Japanese government contributed four of the sound cannons to Malaysia. The devices will be mounted on maritime agency’s offshore patrol boats, Saiful said.
Japanese official Tamura Makoto told the Tokyo public broadcaster NHK that his country would continue to work with Southeast Asian counterparts.
“Southeast Asia has sea lanes vital to Japan. We will continue to support nations in the region so that they can better ensure maritime safety,” he said in a report published Friday.
Unlike Malaysia, Japan is not a direct party to the South China Sea dispute with China, but is an interested stakeholder.
“Japan’s first interest in the South China Sea is to ensure that international trade passes smoothly through the region,” says a paper written in October by H.D.P. Envall at Australian National University, who cites Alessio Patalano’s book “Japan as a Maritime Power.”
“Approximately 80% of Japan’s energy imports travel through the South China Sea and much of its trade as well,” the paper said.
Territorial disputes
Japan is locked in its own dispute with China in the East China Sea, particularly over the Senkaku Islands.
As for the South China Sea, Beijing claims almost all of it, including waters within the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan. While Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the dispute, Beijing claims historic rights to parts of the sea overlapping Indonesia’s EEZ as well.
Meanwhile, Beijing has ignored a 2016 international arbitration court ruling won by Manila that invalidated China’s vast claims in the South China Sea.
According to the Malaysian government audit report published in 2020, the latest one available, Chinese coast guard and navy ships intruded into Malaysian waters in the South China Sea 89 times between 2016 and 2019. Those ships remained in the region until they were turned away by the Malaysian navy.
Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia have accused China of disrupting their oil and gas exploration activities with frequent incursions by Chinese coast guard and maritime militia ships, leading to confrontations and incidents.
All such activities by Beijing are “viewed from Japan’s perspective as part of a single strategy by China intended to weaken the territorial claims and control of other states in the area and establish its own control,” says the paper by ANU’s Envall.
“Japan also faces similar grey zone tactics – attempts at coercion that fall just below what is considered an ‘armed attack’ – in the East China Sea,” the paper says.
Like with Malaysia, Japan is also enhancing ties with South China Sea claimants, the Philippines and Indonesia.
China will view ‘exercises with suspicion’
Malaysia’s coast guard lacks maritime patrol, emergency response and enforcement resources, so it has acquired assistance from several partners, including Japan and Australia, said Hoo Chiew Ping, senior lecturer in Strategic Studies and International Relations at the Universiti Kebangsaan.
“Thus, the acoustic devices to be provided by Japan will increase MMEA’s detection capability and provide a warning system to our fishermen to reduce the risks of maritime clash or confrontation with foreign vessels in our waters,” she told RFA-affiliate BenarNews.
The drills with Japan will definitely invite China’s suspicion, said Shahriman Lockman, a director at Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies.
“China would naturally view such exercises with suspicion. They will doubtless express their dismay, even if unofficially, to Malaysian government officials. This is only to be expected,” Lockman told BenarNews.
“At the same time, China must surely understand at some level that Malaysia needs to build the capacity to defend itself.”
Lockman noted China has a persistent presence in Malaysia’s EEZ in the South China Sea.
“Periodically, a China Coast Guard vessel will convey China’s objections to Malaysia’s oil and gas activities in the Luconia Shoals area, particularly the Kasawari Gas Development Project,” he said.
“China’s presence has become the new normal and is usually shadowed by Malaysian government vessels. There are occasional tensions but these seem to be moderated and kept under control.”
Chinese negotiators tried to get Pfizer to lower the price of its antiviral Paxlovid — a front-line treatment in the ongoing wave of COVID-19 infections sweeping the country — to just 200 yuan per box, an industry insider told Radio Free Asia.
Negotiations between China’s National Healthcare Security Administration (NHSA) and Pfizer “failed because of the drug’s high price,” China’s state-backed media newspaper reported last week.
The nationalistic tabloid Global Times accused U.S. “capital forces” of profiteering from the current wave of COVID-19, amid an ongoing shortage of antivirals and widespread reports of pneumonia since the lifting of restrictions last month.
The financial magazine Caixin quoted unnamed sources as saying that Pfizer hadn’t lowered its price significantly beyond the 1,890 yuan (U.S. $280) it currently charges Chinese hospitals, while the Global Times said the drug hadn’t been included in China’s national medical insurance program due to the high price.
That claim was judged to be “misleading” following an investigation by the Asia Fact Check Lab, which is affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
Healthcare industry insider Zhang Ning said Chinese negotiators had already gotten Pfizer to reduce the price of a box of Paxlovid from the original price of 1,890 yuan to just 604 yuan.
“[But] the price they wanted to get it onto the medical insurance [approved list] was 200 yuan/box,” Zhang said. “[Homegrown antiviral] Azvudine was entered into the medical insurance catalog at 270 yuan/box.”
She said Azvudine, a broad-spectrum antiviral agent developed in China to treat HIV/AIDS and approved for use in the national medical insurance system last August, cost far less to produce than small molecule treatments like Paxlovid.
While Radio Free Asia was unable to verify Zhang’s claims independently, they are similar to recent comments from Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, who recently said that negotiations broke down because the Chinese side wanted to sell Paxlovid at a price lower than Pfizer’s price for low- and middle-income countries.
Lower than El Salvador
Bourla said on Jan. 10 that talks with China on future pricing for the treatment had broken off after China had asked for a lower price than Pfizer is charging for most lower middle income countries.
“They are the second highest economy in the world and I don’t think that they should pay less than El Salvador,” Bourla said in comments reported by Reuters at the time.
Zhang said it was unclear why the medical insurance bureau had insisted on such a low price for Paxlovid, given that Azvudine is still in clinical trials.
“The cost of the technology to produce small molecule drugs [like Paxlovid] is very high … and the phase three clinical trials for Azvudine haven’t even been completed yet,” she said. “They have just recruited 1,000 COVID-19 patients for the trial.”
Li Sha, chief pharmacist at the No. 2 Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, said Azvudine was mainly indicated for use in patients over 60 with underlying health conditions.
“[This is] because there have been a lot of adverse reactions, including damage to the nervous system and to liver and kidney function,” Li said.
“It’s not recommended for pregnant and lactating women, as well as patients with severe liver and kidney damage.”
Zhang said the dispute comes amid a nationwide shortage of Paxlovid, which has been known to change hands on the black market for tens of thousands of yuan a box.
“There isn’t any [Paxlovid] available at all, and there has been no sign even on the black market of any new supply during the past couple of days,” she said. “So many people are waiting to buy them.”
“Everyone is currently buying oxygen machines on the black market, snapping them up along with human serum albumin,” Zhang said.
Black market
A Shanghai resident who gave only the surname Huang said human serum albumin is currently selling for several hundred yuan/dose in hospitals, and anything from 1,500-5,000 yuan on the black market.
According to Zhang, the albumin can only be sourced from human plasma, and the current shortage reflects an overall shortage of blood donors.
A recent investigation by the Asia Fact Check Lab suggested that the price of Paxlovid had little to do with the decision not to include it in the medical insurance list of approved drugs.
Paxlovid, also known as Naimatevir Tablets/Ritonavir Tablets, is a small-molecule antiviral oral drug that comes “strongly recommended” by the World Health Organization for the early and mid-term treatment of people at risk of severe illness after infection with COVID-19.
The U.S. government has already agreed to buy 10 million courses of the drug at a cost of around U.S.$530, or 3,700 yuan, compared with the 1,890 yuan/box price initially agreed for the Chinese market.
Germany has agreed to procure one million boxes at a cost of 500 Euro, or 3,640 yuan a box, the investigation found.
It found that Beijing had allocated sufficient funds to pay for Paxlovid, with the national health insurance fund currently enjoying a surplus of more than five trillion yuan, with revenues rising by 7.7% from January to November 2022, compared with the same period the year before.
It cited an economist as saying that Paxlovid wouldn’t make enough money for the Chinese healthcare sector.
“It’s never been about spending taxpayers’ money, and nor a question of whether [Paxlovid] is worth the money,” the economist said. “The real question is who makes money.”
Healthcare workers across China are seeing large numbers of people who have been reinfected with the Omicron variant of COVID-19, putting a further strain on the country’s beleaguered healthcare system, multiple sources told Radio Free Asia.
A healthcare worker surnamed Li in the northern city of Shijiazhuang said medics are now seeing a wave of secondary infections, due to the damage wreaked by COVID-19 on the immune system.
“We’re hearing about a very large number of reinfections in out-of-town areas, due to the damage done to the immune system by the first infection with COVID-19,” Li said. “People are presenting with pain that is five to 10 times worse than what they had during their first infection.”
A doctor in the same city who declined to be named said patients are presenting with reinfections as early as one month after recovering from their first, and with immunity that has been weakened by the virus itself.
Her account was backed up by healthcare workers at hospitals in the northern city of Taiyuan and in the central province of Hunan, who spoke to Radio Free Asia on Friday.
“The incidence of reinfections with Omicron has increased significantly,” an attending physician surnamed Chen at the No. 2 Affiliated Hospital of the Hunan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine said.
“Some data show that around 100,000 people out of three million cases were reinfections, which is about 3%,” Chen said.
Reports of infection rates of around 70% across much of China in recent days would mean an estimated 900 million people in China have been infected at least once with Omicron. If Chen’s figure were to be extrapolated nationwide, that would mean the country is also seeing around 10 million reinfections.
Top internal medicine expert Zhang Boli warned the general public in an interview with the Science and Technology Daily newspaper to be on their guard against reinfection.
Virologists have long warned of the potential for reinfection with the Omicron variant of COVID-19. A study by researchers at London’s Imperial College described Omicron as being highly capable of reinfecting people, even if they are triple-vaccinated.
Study lead author Rosemary Boyton said in June 2022 that getting infected with Omicron “does not provide a potent boost to immunity against reinfection with Omicron in the future.”
Meanwhile, a Nov. 10, 2022 study in the scientific journal Nature found that “reinfection [with COVID-19] further increases risks of death, hospitalization and sequelae in multiple organ systems,” both during the initial disease and in the months that follow.
Medical workers check on elderly patients arriving at the emergency department in a Beijing hospital, Jan. 7, 2023. Credit: Associated Press
‘This isn’t being reported on TV’
The family member of a COVID-19 patient revealed in an audio recording posted to social media in recent days: “The situation has changed a bit … I’m at the hospital today, and beds are in short supply. Everyone here is on their second COVID-19 infection.”
“This isn’t being reported on TV,” the person said. “These reinfected patients are all suffering from deteriorating autoimmunity, and are lying in hospital with only human serum albumin being administered twice daily.”
A healthcare worker surnamed Liu at a hospital in Taiyuan said there are many different mutant strains of Omicron currently circulating in China.
“It’s very serious because so many people got infected all at once the first time around,” Liu said. “The data is changing incredibly fast right now.”
“It’s very easy for people to get reinfected by the virus when they’re not even fully recovered from their first infection,” she said.
Hunan-based doctor Chen said he is seeing a high proportion of severe disease in reinfected elderly people with underlying health problems.
“There is a high proportion of severe cases among reinfected elderly people with high blood sugar, high blood pressure, heart and kidney disease, emphysema, asthma and other underlying diseases,” he said.
A medical supplies business owner surnamed Sun from the eastern province of Jiangsu said the peak of the current wave may have passed in China’s bigger cities.
“I feel the peak has passed in the big cities but not yet in the second, third and fourth-tier cities,” she said. “The rural wave hasn’t really happened yet.”
Hundreds of millions of people are currently heading back to their ancestral homes ahead of Lunar New Year on Jan. 22, sparking fears of a rural wave of COVID-19 infections peaking sometime in March.
