The city of Yangon has been imposed with strict stay-at-home measures as the coronavirus continues to spread. The blanket stay-at-home order, which will continue at least until October 5, allows most people to go out only for essential tasks such as grocery shopping and medical visits, with restrictions on the number of members of a household allowed outside at one time. Non-essential private employees must work from home, and public officials are only allowed to work in-office in two-week shifts. Elsewhere, domestic flights have been grounded. The city of Mandalay, which has seen its own spike in cases, though not nearly as severe, has shut down its hotels.

The full effects of Yangon’s measures remain unclear and will depend on how long they last. Manufacturing and tourism, which have been hard-hit under the pandemic, will continue to suffer, especially with the new freeze on domestic flights. All Yangon factories have been ordered to close, and many have instituted a “no work, no pay” policy for employees forced to stay home, the Myanmar Times reported. On the positive side, Thailand’s chamber of commerce told the Bangkok Post that it does not expect the lockdown to dampen trade between the two countries, although outside Yangon border security remains tight and many shared crossings remain closed.

The stay-at-home measures may also inspire a new request to postpone the November 8th election. The original request was recently leveled by a group of 24 opposition political parties led by the USDP. Although the Union Election Commission said that polling would continue as planned, the new wave of COVID-19 cases and increasingly severe travel restrictions leave postponing the election an open-ended question.

At the time of writing, Myanmar’s number of confirmed COVID-19 cases is over 8000, more than twice the number from a week ago.