Like Thailand and Vietnam, Cambodia was fortunate during the first year of the pandemic but is now facing the kind of spread that was seen in most other countries. The daily cases have become stuck around 800 -1000 since July 1st, which may not sound like much, but considering we were having around 30 – 40 daily cases up until March it’s a significant escalation.

Many of my Cambodian friends have lost faith in these daily case number updates and believe that COVID-19 is more widespread. They all, to a person, cite the diagnosis of 999 daily cases on July 1st as the example of why they don’t take the numbers seriously anymore. There are three reasons behind this:

1. June 30th had the highest daily cases to date at 1130.
2. July 1st, as the first day of the month, is considered a lucky date in Cambodia.
3. 999 is considered a lucky number in Cambodia.

One of my Cambodian friends put it to me like this, “Did they only process 999 tests so they could show a lucky sign after the worst day we’ve had? This isn’t a game.”

Since July 1st, there hasn’t been a single day with more than 1,000 diagnoses. I don’t know why. There have still been enough cases to overwhelm the COVID-19 medical facilities here and people are being advised to quarantine at home if they have a mild case. This has lead to rumors that many people are avoiding the test even when they think have COVID-19 because they won’t receive medical care anyway.

One of our local partners, Building Community Voices, has four staff who have tested positive. Our Finance and Compliance Officer, Ringsey, has a brother and sister-in-law who also recently tested positive. She’s praying that their children and grandmother don’t test positive. In Prey Veng, the rural province where I lived during my first term, our Rural Education Coordinator was exposed to COVID-19 and is trying to isolate herself from her son with disabilities who is immunocompromised. There are also cases in the rural communities where we work in Kratie and Prey Veng province but, fortunately, so far none of our local partner staff have been infected.

Cambodia has continued it’s rapid vaccination campaign and now just under 25% of the total population has been fully vaccinated. This impressive total puts Cambodia at #3 in Asia for vaccinations per 100 people after Singapore (#2) and China (#1). It’s only possible because of China’s massive vaccine donations to Cambodia. There is still some lingering doubt over the quality of the Chinese vaccines among my Cambodian friends but most of them believe that some protection is better than no protection. There is also significant doubt among them about the only ‘Western’ vaccine available here, Astra-Zeneca, due to local stories about some Cambodians having extreme blood clots as a side-effect.