Catholic priest, nun succumbed to COVID-19 in Myanmar as hundreds die

A Catholic priest and a nun were among the latest fatalities of the coronavirus disease in the Diocese of Kalay in Myanmar.

Father Sebastian Phun Lian Mawi and Sister Hilda Vung Go Dim of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Aloysius died on July 14 and 15, respectively, said reports reaching Radio Veritas Asia.

Father Mawi was parish priest of Divine Mercy Church in Sanmyo while Sister Dim was superior of the Convent of St. Elizabeth in Kalay. They were laid to rest on July 15.

Father Phun Lian Mawi was born on January 17, 1980 and was ordained to the priesthood on June 29, 2010.

“He was soft-spoken, kind, and gentle,” said the priest’s friend, Father Peter Kyi Maung. “He was also a good table tennis player.”

“He was a great loss not only for the Diocese of Kalay but also for AsIPA in Myanmar,” said Father Peter Htun Htun of the Archdiocese of Yangon of the National AsIPA Resource Team.

Sister Dim, meanwhile, was born on February 2, 1967, was 29 years as a religious.

The Diocese of Kalay already lost three priests and two religious sisters due to the new surge of the coronavirus disease.

About half of the 54 Catholic priests in the diocese in the country’s Sagaing region suffered from symptoms of the disease — fever, cough, and colds — in recent weeks.

Hundreds more bodies than usual are being taken for funerals every day in Myanmar as a new wave of COVID-19 sweeps through the country, said reports.

The accounts from different parts of Myanmar point to the daily death tolls being higher than those given by the health ministry, which hit a record 145 fatalities on Wednesday.

The number of funerals at the Yay Way cemetery in Myanmar's biggest city, Yangon, was around 200 per day over the past week, well over double the number that would normally be expected, funeral services said.

There were similar increases at two other cemeteries in the city with 400 to 500 people being cremated there per day, they said.

In Myanmar's second city of Mandalay, an official from the Aye Yeik Nyein cemetery said 63 bodies had been cremated there on Tuesday. All were suspected COVID-19 cases while other cemeteries handled deaths from other causes, he said.

Coronavirus cases started to rise in Myanmar in June, and have soared in the past two weeks, with a record 7,089 infections reported on Wednesday.

According to official figures, there have been more than 208,000 infections and 4,181 deaths in the country since the start of the pandemic.

Health workers believe the case numbers are far higher than officially reported because testing collapsed after the military seized power from elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1. - Raymond Kyaw Aung for Radio Veritas Asia, with a report from LiCAS.news