"THE FIRST of the five men to be admitted to Yangon’s South Okkalapa Maternal and Child Hospital with COVID-19 was 32-year-old Ko Sithu Wu. Sithu Wu had been under quarantine at the Ya Wai Nwe monastery in Mingalardon Township after coming into contact with case 59 in Myanmar’s tally of confirmed cases, which is now at 176. After testing positive for the virus on April 19, he became case 103 and was moved to the South Okkalapa hospital. Expecting that quarantine might be tedious or lonely, Sithu Wu had taken a Sony mirrorless camera, capable of capturing video, and a laptop so that he could complete a project for the company he owns, Wu Productions, which makes commercial videos. “I continued working at the quarantine centre, and after I tested positive I took my camera and laptop with me to the hospital,” he told Frontier on May 4. Support independent journalism in Myanmar. Sign up to be a Frontier member. At the hospital’s isolation ward, Sithu Wu eventually found himself sharing a six-bed room with four other patients. The last of the group to be admitted, on April 26, was Ko Chan Myae Aung, 32, the owner of the O Sushi restaurant on Parami Road in Yangon’s Hlaing Township, which was locked down by the authorities after he tested positive for COVID-19, becoming case 146. Determined to make the most of his hospital stay, he brought his guitar with him. “When I saw them on my first day on April 26, they didn’t seem like hospital patients,” Chan Myae Aung told Frontier, remarking on how healthy they looked. “I was really happy to be with them and I forgot that I was a COVID-19 patient.” Another of the five had also brought his guitar and the group began playing and singing together. Their jamming session led to an altruistic idea to target a bigger audience – to show friends, relatives and other COVID-19 patients that they were in good health, despite being infected with the virus, and help assuage some of the fear and anxiety created by the coronavirus pandemic. The men got to work quickly and their first production was posted to Facebook on April 26, the same day that Chan Myae Aung arrived at the hospital. It drew overwhelmingly positive responses, with many wishing them a speedy recovery. The video, called “Dude Covid, get out of here”, is a comedy montage in which the five dance to an Indian pop song and mime activities from their daily routine, such as exercising, self-checking their vital signs and cleaning the corridor outside their room (while strumming the mops as if they were guitars)..."