PHNOM PENH • The patients sit in packed ambulances before passing through metal gates. Once they are inside, they get a number, like C07-22, a thin blanket and a bedsheet which is meant to be a mosquito net. Lights shine bright at all hours for constant camera surveillance. Each person is given four bottles of water a day and three small meals.
The Cambodian government, racing to contain a raging coronavirus outbreak, has set up a system of quarantine centres. No one is allowed to leave until they test negative - and most people are stuck for at least 10 days.
Cambodia was a Covid-19 success story until a few months ago. From 500 cases and no deaths in late February, there were 72,923 cases and 1,283 deaths by yesterday - with nearly 900 new cases per day and almost 70 per cent of the fatalities coming in the preceding month.
The sprawling quarantine centres are the product of an overwhelmed and underfunded healthcare system, a jolt of recent Covid-19 deaths and a strict streak that often turns to a robust security apparatus in times of trouble. The Cambodian government has gone from nonchalance to closures to crackdowns.
In April, the government passed a law that threatened 20 years in prison for anyone judged to have intentionally spread the virus. During a recent curfew period, security forces patrolled neighbourhoods with bamboo canes.
Prime Minister Hun Sen, a strongman who has held power for 36 years, has thundered against anyone who escaped government treatment, eluded quarantine or violated home isolation.
Phnom Penh health officials confirmed this month that 21 Covid-19 care centres had been set up across the capital, including state hospitals and various large venues that have been converted to hold the surging number of patients.
Dr Or Vandine, secretary of state at the Ministry of Health, said she did not know how many patients were in the state-run quarantine camps, but that officials were doing all they could to "make conditions in the camps liveable".
At Koh Pich, a usually exclusive area that means "Diamond Island", a former event space has been turned into a 1,800-bed facility with patients confined to single beds about an arm's length away from one another. Many families are inside, with crying infants.
In the suburb of Sen Sok, a gargantuan wedding venue usually reserved for lavish parties hosted by Cambodia's elite is now equipped to hold 1,500 people and is adorned with clotheslines, trash piles and fences.
And the sporting grounds of the Olympic Stadium, a 1960s masterwork by Cambodian architect Vann Molyvann, now look like an industrial-scale medical centre, complete with mobile barracks, isolation facilities and medics in hazmat suits.
According to the World Health Organisation's representative to Cambodia, Dr Li Ailan, the country's spike in Covid-19 cases was caused by new, more infectious variants of the virus, as well as a mix of pandemic fatigue and the false belief that vaccines will prevent all infection. She said there were "pros and cons" to the government's methods.
She said that while it is important to keep the people in quarantine centres in a positive frame of mind, it is equally important to give them effective treatment.
"The quarantine centres have a defined number of people in each of them, while people with severe or critical symptoms are being treated in the referral hospitals," Dr Li said.
Cambodia is at a critical stage of its Covid-19 response, with outbreaks in factories, prisons, markets and small communities, Dr Li added. "Vaccines are an important tool in fighting Covid-19, but they will not end the pandemic."
Cambodia's vaccination programme has been praised for reaching 6.3 million of the country's 16 million people.
The Ministry of Health has denied that the centres are overcrowded. Those who end up there were tested at their workplaces, went to a local public clinic to get checked or were ordered to go to a state-run testing site, where a positive result leads straight to a quarantine centre.
NYTIMES
