Residents across Myanmar's biggest city are defying a military curfew in a desperate search for oxygen to keep their loved ones breathing as a new coronavirus wave crashes over the crisis-wracked country.
The spike in cases is the latest blow to Myanmar, already suffering from a February takeover and a bloody crackdown on dissent that has killed over 900 people and gutted the economy.
Hundreds queued across Yangon as the sun rose on Wednesday (July 14) in the hope of refilling blue oxygen cylinders to take home to family members stricken with the virus.
Some brought chairs, prepared for a long wait.
For others, it was too late.
"My sister was suffering from Covid-19 for three days," Mr Than Zaw Win told AFP as he left one of the queues in the city of some seven million.
"In the first day, she was dizzy with low (blood) pressure... and she suffered a lot yesterday as she couldn't breathe well."
"But while I was queuing to fill oxygen this morning, my niece called me to go back home as my sister had died."
The authorities logged more than 7,000 new cases on Wednesday - compared with fewer than 50 per day in early May.
Millions in Yangon and the second city of Mandalay have been ordered to stay home, but the toll continues to rise and volunteer teams are stepping in to remove the bodies of victims from their neighbourhoods.
Mr Ye Kyaw Moe, a sailor, said he slipped out at 3am - half an hour before the lifting of a military-imposed curfew - to get a place in the oxygen line.
But when he arrived at a refill centre in Yangon, there were already 14 others in front of him.
"I haven't slept the whole night" he told AFP.
"I also had to be careful to avoid the soldiers as we are still under martial law." The State Administration Council says there is no need for alarm.
"Actually we have enough oxygen" ran the headline in Tuesday's Global New Light of Myanmar, a state-backed newspaper.
But Mr Than Zaw Win disagreed.
"She had no other diseases... There is no way my sister would have died if we had enough oxygen," he said.
'Through rain or sun'
Swathes of Myanmar were put under partial lockdown last year but enforcement was often lax in the developing nation, where many had to choose between following regulations and feeding their families.
