Prime Minister Hun Sen has ordered provincial authorities throughout the Kingdom to use temporarily closed schools as makeshift hospitals and has told relevant officials to prepare facilities there for the treatment of Covid-19 patients.

His order comes as three more Covid-19 cases were reported on Monday, raising Cambodia’s tally to 87.

Hun Sen said: “We will have to use schools to treat the patients. In some provincial towns and places, we will take over schools and turn them into hospitals.

“We will organise and prepare water and electricity at the locations, and we must now focus on setting up these makeshift hospitals.

“Buildings that have a good capacity will be taken over. Police, soldiers and Military Police will all work together to help us undertake this task.”

Meanwhile, Cham Yeam border checkpoint officials in Koh Kong province said before Thai border closures came into effect on Monday morning, only 100 Cambodians returned to Cambodia.

But an official at Daung or Lem International Checkpoint in Battambang province who asked not to be named said around 1,000 migrant workers rushed onto Cambodian soil unchecked by medical staff.

Howeve, Banteay Meanchey provincial health department director Keo Sopheaktra said on Monday that he and a working group were checking nearly 1,000 migrant workers from Thailand for Covid-19.

“We are preparing to ask permission from Samdech [Hun Sen] to allow them to proceed to their provinces. There are many people here, numbering nearly 1,000. We are conducting health checks on everyone,” he said.

Communicable Disease Control Department (CDC) director Ly Sovann said on Monday that officials and medical staff do not have the capacity to quarantine all Cambodians who re-entered the country and that it should be exercised on a voluntary basis.