YANGON, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Saturday announced extending the effective period of temporary entry restrictions to all incoming visitors until Sept. 30.
The ministry also extended the effective period of temporary suspension of all types of visas including social visit visas and visa exemption services until the end of September.
On Saturday morning, 13 more locally transmitted cases were confirmed and the number of COVID-19 infections reached 656 so far, according to a daily release from the Health and Sports Ministry.
The newly-confirmed cases are from Rakhine state, except one from Shan state who had a close contact with an infected patient, the release said.
Myanmar has detected new local transmission again on Aug. 16 since its local case was lastly reported on July. 16.
Since Aug. 16, the country's Rakhine state has been seeing increasing number of local cases and all townships of the state are now under the stay-at-home order, as part of measures to effectively curb the spread of the disease.
Meanwhile, the effective period of suspension of operating international air services was also extended to Sept. 30, to prevent the importation of the disease through air travel.
COVID-19 was first detected in Myanmar on March 23 and the death toll stands at six. Enditem
