Eight out of more than 100 truck drivers and assistants who have entered Arakan State in recent days have tested positive for COVID-19, the state’s Public Health Department said on October 9. 

A total of 124 more polling stations are planned to be set up in Arakan State for the upcoming general election as a social distancing measure in the COVID-19 era, according to the state election subcommission. 

Local residents in Arakan State’s Kyaukphyu Township will be punished under Section 30(a) of the Natural Disaster Management Law if they go out after 11a.m. except for health reasons starting on October 9, according to a statement from the township COVID-19 prevention, control and treatment committee. 

Tenants in some Sittwe wards are complaining that they have not received outpass cards required to leave residences to shop or run other necessary errands under restrictions intended to prevent the spread of COVID-19.  

About 5,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) in Paletwa Township, Chin State, are in urgent need of rice as provisions of the staple grain from the World Food Programme (WFP) have not arrived in recent weeks, according to IDPs. 

A former lawyer from the Arakan State capital Sittwe was charged at the township court under the Telecommunications Law’s Section 66(d), a notorious defamation provision, on October 7.  

More than 300 local residents have been displaced by fighting between the Tatmadaw and the Arakan Army (AA) in Buthidaung Township this week.

Residents of Nat Maw village in Arakan State’s Taungup Township have complained to the Anti-Corruption Commission, alleging that their former local administrator misappropriated the government’s COVID-19 relief fund, a village source said.

More than 400 Muslim contract-appointed teachers from government-run schools and IDP camp classrooms for Muslims in Sittwe, Arakan State, are facing financial hardship as they have gone months without receiving paychecks.

A Rural Road Development Department director who had been receiving treatment for COVID-19 at Sittwe General Hospital succumbed to the disease on October 7.

Discreet anti-government and anti-military campaigns have been reported in the Arakan State townships of Sittwe, Taungup, Ramree and Minbya, following the arrest and prosecution of anti-war demonstrators in the state capital Sittwe and elsewhere in Myanmar over recent weeks. 

Voter lists in Aungzigone Village, Rathedaung Township, were damaged this week by shrapnel from an artillery shell allegedly fired by the Tatmadaw, according to U Oo Kyaw Thein, the village administrator.

A resident of Anaukpyin (Muslim) village in Rathedaung Township, Arakan State, was wounded by a stray bullet at about 6:30 p.m. on October 7, according to the village administrator and the victim. 

Poor families in Ramree Township, Arakan State, complain that they have not been receiving COVID-19 relief funds being provided to some households by the government.

COVID-19 patients who have been put on oxygen concentrators at Sittwe General Hospital in Arakan State will be treated with convalescent plasma from recovered patients, according to an official from the hospital.  

The All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU) said the Aungmyethazan Township Court in Mandalay has sentenced two students to an additional year in prison for protesting against military operations in Arakan State last month.

Two out of three residents of Padar village in Taungup Township, Arakan State, who were arrested by security personnel on suspicion of having ties to the Arakan Army were released on October 6, according to family members.

The military took custody once again of a detained village administrator in the Arakan State capital Sittwe who was briefly turned over to police after his initial arrest by Tatmadaw personnel on Saturday. 

An 8-year-old boy was wounded by heavy weapons fire from a naval vessel in Rathedaung Township, Arakan State, according to the boy’s family and local villagers.