Two more Covid cases confirmed, both locals returning home

THE health ministry reported two more Covid-19 cases after two Cambodian men travelling from Japan tested positive, bringing the total active cases to seven.

In a press release on Wednesday, the ministry said one of the men is a 34-year-old resident of Sarikakeo commune in Kandal province’s Lvea Em district, and the other is a 23-year-old from Pursat province’s Bakan district.

Both of them arrived via a connecting flight from South Korea.

They are being treated at the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital.

They were among a total of 39 passengers on board the plane, including seven females.

The other 37 tested negative and are being quarantined at Pochentong High School and a hotel in Phnom Penh.

The ministry said as of Wednesday, Cambodia recorded 290 Covid-19 cases since the outbreak, with 283 recoveries.

The remaining seven – three Cambodian men, a Cambodian woman, a Polish man, a French man and a French woman – are being treated at the Khmer-Soviet Friendship Hospital.

Health ministry spokesman Or Vandine said a three-year-old child – who arrived in Cambodia with their infected parents from Iraq via a connecting flight in South Korea – tested negative again and is allowed to stay at the hospital after it was decided that the parents were fit for guardianship despite being in treatment.

The child’s parents first tested positive on Oct 19.

Meanwhile, the 73 Cambodian UN peacekeepers who returned home after completing their mission in South Sudan on Tuesday are being held for quarantine and testing at the Peacekeeping Forces and Explosive Remnants of War Clearance training centre in Kampong Speu province.

Ork Sieng, deputy director of the National Centre for Peacekeeping Forces, Mine and Explosive Remnants of War Clearance, said while welcoming the peacekeepers home at the airport that they would be tested again even though they had already tested negative before leaving South Sudan.

Cambodia sent over 7,123 troops, including 400 women, on UN missions since 2006 and is the second-largest Asean contributor to peacekeeping efforts.

The country currently has five divisions and a total of 787 peacekeepers deployed in Lebanon, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali and the Central African Republic.