Yangon (AFP)

In Yangon, the largest city in Burma, residents are braving the military curfew in a desperate quest for oxygen to allow loved ones with Covid-19 patients to breathe, as the epidemic rages in the country, which fears an Indian scenario.

The country has been in chaos since the military took power on February 1, unleashing a brutal crackdown on opponents that has left more than 900 dead and shattered the economy.

At dawn on Wednesday, hundreds of people lined up in hopes of being able to fill long blue cylinders with oxygen and save family members with the disease, AFP journalists said.

Filling stations have popped up all over the city in recent days and their location is updated on social networks.

Some are free, but others charge around 3 euros for a 40 liter cylinder.

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"My sister had been suffering from Covid-19 for three days. (...) she received medical treatment at home. And she suffered a lot yesterday because she could not breathe well," Than Zaw told AFP Win, leaving one of the queues.

"But my niece just called me to come home because my sister is dead."

The country recorded more than 7,000 new cases on Wednesday, compared to less than 50 a day in early May.

In Yangon, 7 million inhabitants, and in Mandalay, the second city of the country, confinements have been decreed, but the toll continues to increase and teams of volunteers are mobilizing to remove the bodies of the dead victims from their homes.

Some locals get up in the middle of the night to be prominently in line.

Arrived at 3 am in front of a recharging center, Ye Kyaw Moe had the bad surprise to find 14 people in front of him.

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"I haven't slept all night," he told AFP.

"I also had to be careful to avoid the soldiers because we are still under martial law."

The military junta says there is no cause for alarm.

"In fact, we have enough oxygen," headlined the official Global New Light of Myanmar on Tuesday.

- Hours of waiting in the rain or a blazing sun -

“People don't need to worry so much and shouldn't spread the rumor,” junta leader Min Aung Hlaing said.

This new wave comes as the country is shaken by the violence that followed the coup and many doctors and health workers are on long strike in protest against the military.

On Wednesday, the Global New Light admitted that "difficulties" had arisen in "prevention and control activities" in their absence.

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The vaccination campaign is extremely slow and to date less than 2 million people have been vaccinated in this country of 54 million inhabitants.

"The junta does not have the resources, the capacities and the legitimacy necessary to control this crisis", declared Wednesday Tom Andrews, United Nations special rapporteur on Burma.

"The crisis ... is particularly deadly because of the pervasive mistrust of the military junta," he said.

Burma is due to receive six million doses of vaccine from China by next month.

Too late for those who are struggling to breathe.

In another queue in Yangon, Aung Kyaw, 43, was hoping to get more oxygen for his wife.

The last time he wanted to fill up a 40-liter bottle, he was made to wait for 24 hours, he told AFP.

Unlike others, he says he can't afford to scour the city looking for less frequented filling stations.

"So I have to wait and stand in line here in the rain or the blazing sun and all night too."

© 2021 AFP