Myanmar’s COVID-19 related deaths rose 113 cases on Friday to a total of 14,850 cases, according to the Ministry of Heath and Sports, as the country struggles to tackle the pandemic.

The country’s struggle to tackle the health threat has been compounded by the military coup, according to critics, claiming the junta has failed to allocate resources effectively and has tended to favour government administration related patients rather than the general public.

Tallying the COVID-19 case and death numbers appears to remain problematic due to the continued use of PCT tests and the lack of clarity over what people have actually been dying of.

As one health ministry official clarified during the earlier bout of cases in 2020, most people who die registered as COVID-19 actually die of other conditions or diseases.

At this stage, the need for oxygen cylinders in Myanmar remains acute, indicating most patients are not receiving early care in the form of the right treatment protocols and antiviral medicine.

For many with COVID-19 symptoms in Myanmar, the situation is dire because of the security situation and the limited health facilities operating.

It is not surprising, given these circumstances, that a significant number of people are treated too late, or fail to get treatment, and die.

But what is unclear is the veracity of the actual COVID-19 tally in terms of case numbers and death numbers. These numbers could be heavily inflated, if the claims of doctors and lawyers challenging the pandemic narrative are anything to go by, given the PCR test is inadequate for the purpose.

America’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced they would end the use of the PCR test at the end of the year. In January, they downgraded their recommendation for the cycle threshold used in the test. According to some health professionals, the PCR test is typically misused coming up with a large percentage of “false positives” due to is being run at a high cycle threshold.

The Myanmar health ministry claims they have 383,514 confirmed COVID-19 cases, said to be from 3.4 million people tested.