Cambodia also has a very bad outbreak in SEA. Cambodia enjoyed near covid-19 free since early 2020 and encounter 3 waves of outbreaks. It survived the first two and still struggles with the third one.
In early 2021, during our weekly meeting, I told my staff that when the two larger neighbors of Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, had an outbreak, especially with new variants, there is no reason Cambodia can avoid it. An outbreak is just a matter of time and this time our luck has run out. (PS: Vietnam handles the pandemic very well that it has no urgent need for vaccination. The only vaccine available in Vietnam now is a small batch of AZ imported from Europe. Russia offered to donate its Spunik V but I have no idea if the vaccine even arrives.)
600K of Sinopharm vaccines arrived to Cambodia as early as Feb 10, 2021. By that time, no one care about taking the shot or even skeptical about the safety of the vaccine. The India's AZ arrived with 324K later on. Our Prime Minister took the AZ on a live TV because Sinopharm is for age group of 18 to 59 while AZ can be used for old people.
I talked to my friend that take or not to take the vaccine depends on two evaluations of ourselves; the risks of taking vaccines and the risks of being infected by covid-19. By the time of talking, risks of taking vaccines seems higher that I decided not to take the shot at that time. However, there came the Feb-20 community infection event that daily infections grow dramatically and sometime came out from nowhere. Many migrant workers who feared infection of covid-19 in Thailand fled back to Cambodia, some hid themselves from quarantine and brought the virus to the community. We knew it was serious and this time our luck has run out. We arranged our staff to take the vaccines on volunteer basis. Later when situation worsened, there's no more volunteer principle. I pressured my staff to take the vaccine or may faced suspension from work. We were not among the priority groups to take the vaccines, however, we used our relationship to get our people vaccinated. Most of them have taken the 1st shot and some has also taken the 2nd one.
The current situation is: we are under lockdown and the lockdown has extended another 7 days from Apr 29 to May 5. Curfew still enforced. Our business partially resumes with only 2 persons allowed to come to office.
