"Since March 2020, the Karen National Union (KNU) has been organizing a widespread campaign to protect communities in their areas against Covid-19. They have organised virus prevention trainings for health personnel in each district, and distributed protective materials and thermometers. These personnel have conducted health awareness campaigns, and, together with local communities, set up screening checkpoints on key access roads for anyone entering their areas. This rapid mobilizing was made possible by the KNU health department’s long experience in developing responsive, culturally appropriate programming in rural areas, as necessitated by decades of civil war and structural flaws in the Burmese government health system – whose rigid centralized approach has proven woefully inefficient and unaccountable in addressing basic health needs of ethnic populations. By April, the KNU Covid-19 Response Team had set up 49 screening posts in seven districts, including along the Thai-Burma border. But in the last week of April, the Burma Army began shutting down these Karen screening posts. Four posts were ordered shut in Doothahtoo (Thaton) district (KNU Brigade 1), and on May 6, the Burma Army set fire to two checkpoints in southern Mutraw (Hpa-pun) district (KNU Brigade 5), causing armed clashes with the KNU and displacing over 480 villagers from Wa Tho Khoh village, where the Burma Army had shot and injured two elderly civilians in January this year. . On June 2, another screening post was destroyed by the Burma Army in Kler Lwe Htoo (Nyaunglebin) district (KNU Brigade 3)..."