via The Arts Newspaper, 08 January 2021: Several Southeast Asian sites are mentioned in this article – George Town, Bagan and Angkor. You can also see the full extent of Covid-19 related news here.
Lockdowns, stranded workers, a collapse in tourism revenue, the threat of looting: the stewards of cultural heritage sites across the globe have faced harrowing difficulties over the past year in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. All are still struggling to meet the challenges as the new year begins.
…
Susan Macdonald, head of buildings and sites for the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI), reports setbacks in the Malaysian city of Penang, where the collapse of international tourism has inhibited urban conservation efforts.
…
At the same time, the threat of looting at poorly staffed cultural sites remains omnipresent. Macdonald of the GCI points to concerns about its conservation site at Bagan, Myanmar, where project partners have to monitor more than 3,600 Buddhist temples to ensure that the site remains secure.
…
Yet in some narrow cases the pandemic has had a silver lining. Rössler notes that the steep decline in tourism allowed technicians in Angkor Wat in Cambodia to step up their conservation work in the absence of crowds, for instance.