Myanmar continues to struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic with COVID-19 cases standing at over 447,269 and over 17,835 deaths, as of October 2. That said, fewer stories are coming out about people struggling with the virus and what was earlier a high demand for oxygen cylinders. This could lead to speculation that the pandemic may be subsiding, given it is normal for a pandemic to eventually play itself out.

Obtaining a true assessment of how dire the situation is in Myanmar is difficult in part because as a growing number of scientists and health professionals around the world are pointing out, the PCR Test for COVID-19 is not suitable for diagnostic testing and is typically run incorrectly so that it provides a high percentage of false positives. Last year, a Myanmar Ministry of Health official admitted that most of the people who were put down as dying from COVID-19 had actually died of other diseases and conditions.

POOR HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE

The biggest challenge in tackling the pandemic appears to be the poor state of the health service with the Military junta blocking supplies and causing problems for health professionals, and the call by the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) to down tools, meaning many doctors and nurses are not working, or at least not working in support of the junta civil infrastructure.

The earlier rush for oxygen cylinders indicated that COVID-19 patients or those suspected of having contracted COVID-19 were not receiving early treatment with antivirals and vitamins.

Health treatment protocols in Myanmar – and in many countries around the world – are poor, with some effective drugs being banned, according to reporting from our special correspondent who has been covering the pandemic in depth.

A growing number of health professionals around the world are bucking the standard treatment narrative and calling for early treatment that is provided to protect patients – with a roughly 99.95% survival rate. This early treatment protocol makes a mockery of the need for a vaccine – particularly given the fact that the vaccines are recognized as not preventing a person catching or passing on the virus. Growing numbers of COVID-19 patients in hospitals in the US and Israel – two key countries to monitor - have been double-vaccinated. Compounding the problem, the voluntary reporting systems for vaccine adverse effects are pointing to a high level of negative responses and deaths from the vaccines.

Meanwhile, in Myanmar the junta has been calling for outside aid to support their efforts to combat the pandemic.

AIDING BOTH SIDES

Delivering vaccines to Myanmar's junta, but also to rebel groups that are the generals' sworn enemies, China is playing both sides to fight the coronavirus and strengthen its hand in the messy politics of its southern neighbour.

Beijing has already handed over nearly 13 million vaccine doses to the generals, who ousted Aung San Suu Kyi in February and plunged Myanmar and its healthcare system into chaos.

The junta has appeared powerless to halt the spread of the virus, spooking authorities on the other side of its porous, 2,000-kilometre frontier with China, where officials are waging a "zero case" war on COVID-19 – a zero case situation being impossible to maintain.

So, Beijing has quietly shipped thousands of vaccines, medical workers, and construction materials for quarantine centres, multiple rebel groups told AFP.

Chinese Red Cross staff "come to help us sometimes... to help us prevent the Covid pandemic," said Colonel Naw Bu, spokesman for the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). "But they did not come to stay here," added the colonel, whose group -- numbering thousands -- controls territory in Myanmar's northern jade-rich hills. They just came for a while and went back."

The KIA is one of Myanmar's more than 20 ethnic rebel groups - many of whom control swathes of remote border territory - who have fought each other and the military over the drugs trade, natural resources and autonomy.

But they are all vulnerable to COVID-19.

As a third wave ripped through lowland Myanmar in July, the KIA inoculated 10,000 people in their Laiza headquarters with Chinese jabs, Naw Bu said.

Health workers had also crossed over from China to deliver masks and hand sanitiser, he added.

It is a scene familiar along the porous border.

The Shan State Progress Party rebel group has vaccinated 1,000 people in areas under its control with Chinese vaccines, a spokesperson told AFP.

It had ordered a total of half a million, he added.

"Good neighbour" China had also promised to supply doses to the Ta'ang National Liberation Army, based in nearby territory, spokesman Brigadier General Tar Phone Kyaw told AFP.

Meanwhile, in the border town of Muse, men work on a new quarantine centre that will house up to 1,000 beds for traders keen to resume business with the country's giant, Covid-wary neighbour.

The workers are Myanmar nationals, but the building materials were all provided by authorities in China's Yunnan province, AFP found.

REBEL BUFFER

The aid is receiving none of the fanfare of Beijing's diplomacy elsewhere in Asia and across Africa.

"China will as always, according to their needs, provide necessary assistance and support to the Myanmar people in their fight against the epidemic," a Chinese foreign affairs spokesman said when asked if Beijing was helping insurgent groups fight Covid-19.

But Enze Han, a University of Hong Kong associate professor in public administration, said it "makes sense" for authorities across the border to help.

"If China wants to protect itself from Covid... it needs to create a buffer zone," he told AFP.

And ethnic Chinese groups, using Chinese SIM cards and currency, live along the border in areas "basically grafted onto the lower belly of China," explained David Mathieson, an analyst formerly based in Myanmar.

If major clashes between rebels and the military broke out -- as it did in 2017, sending thousands fleeing into China -- it would be a "worst-case scenario" for Beijing, he said.

NO OTHER OPTION

China - the junta's main ally, which has refused to describe its February ouster of the civilian government as a coup - has sent millions of vaccines directly to the military government.

But with widespread distrust keeping many away from healthcare in junta-controlled territory, analysts say Beijing will continue involving itself in areas where the writ of the Myanmar state runs thin.

"The military government definitely doesn't like it," said Hong Kong University's Han.

"But they have no option."

Reporting by Jan Raphael for Mizzima and AFP