"When the World Health Organization issued its first COVID-19 situation report, on January 21, a total of 282 people had been infected by the virus, including 258 in Wuhan, China – the epicentre of the pandemic – and 24 in Thailand, South Korea and Japan. Myanmar was not mentioned until the 64th WHO situation report, after the country’s first two confirmed cases were reported on March 23. In the 56 days to May 17, Myanmar had reported 187 confirmed cases, six deaths, the recovery of 97 patients, and 84 active cases. Myanmar has had fewer confirmed cases than many other countries and, despite limited testing, the spread of the virus seems outwardly to be under control. However, some observers, particularly form outside Myanmar, have not been optimistic about Myanmar’s capacity to control and contain COVID-19. They point to a range of vulnerabilities, including Myanmar’s long border with Chin"a, the 320,000 Chinese tourists who visited Myanmar last year, and the large numbers of people that cross Myanmar’s borders both informally and formally. Myanmar also has many over-crowded camps for people displaced by war, including in Rakhine and Kachin states, where armed conflict continues and the number of people in IDP camps continues to rise. Because of these factors, they cautioned, the virus could spread disastrously in Myanmar. They also said the relatively low number of infections that have been detected in Myanmar might simply be because of low testing capacity. But are the prospects for a COVID-19 outbreak as ominous as their grim predictions?...