Covid-19: The hit to Southeast Asia’s wealthiest nations

After the Covid-19 pandemic, our perception of the world will never be the same. It has infected over 40 millions people and taken over a million lives. The world’s economy has only been a few steps away from a global recession over the past few months. In countries such as the United States of America, where the presidential election is taking place this year, Covid-19 has initiated shifts in agendas and strategies of politicians. Education is postponed, services are mostly closed, and we have to learn to ‘quarantine’ from our daily activities.

Southeast Asian nations are especially close to China, which was the ground zero of the pandemic. On a daily basis, citizens from these nations cross Chinese borders both legally and illegally to perform trades, tourism, etc. These actions have allowed the virus to transmit at an exponential rate, and cases keep multiplying as it reaches more borders. Within the Southeast Asia region, citizens can travel freely without visas, this works alongside with the low levels of development in numerous areas across the region; as a result, many nations in the region are currently suffering from huge economic losses due to the extra assets required in funding hospitals, and the lack of demand to fuel economic activities.  

With vibrant economies, Indonesia and Vietnam are among Southeast Asia’s wealthiest nations. However, their responses to the Covid-19 pandemic have been entirely different in terms of the procedures and the effectiveness.

A passenger (R) has her body temperature checked at a railway station in Hanoi, April 6, 2020.

Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy.

Vietnam

Vietnam borders China and received the first case in late January. Top experts from around the world have prepared for the worst case scenario in Vietnam where the country's inability to cope against the unpredictable transmission rate of the disease, could lead to major collapse in the economic and political system. Despite all the negative comments from the international communities, Vietnam has proved how the statistic has underrated Vietnamese people’s efforts to combat against the disease with only 1,172 cases and 35 deaths, according to the latest reports in October. 

Vietnam has responded rather early to the pandemic by imposing mandatory temperature screening for passengers arriving from Wuhan, beginning in late January. After a few days, the country cancelled flights from Wuhan, followed by the suspension of visas for Chinese citizens. 

"We have a very strong system: 63 provincial CDCs (centers for disease control), more than 700 district-level CDCs, and more than 11,000 commune health centers. All of them attribute to contact tracing," said doctor Pham Quang Thai, deputy head of the Infection Control Department at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi. In April, the government set up a nation-wide lockdown despite there having been no reported deaths. Moreover, it was reported in May that the government has completed quarantine for 70,000 people in close contact with the disease while having 140,000 to self-isolate at home. By following every case closely and taking preventive measures seriously, Vietnam has successfully dodged waves of coronavirus arriving at the country and stopped potential economic losses. 

Indonesia 

By October, Indonesia had officially held the record for most Covid-19 cases in comparison to other Southeast Asian nations, with 396,454 cases and 13,512 deaths. The country has been negatively criticized for their intentions to re-facilitate economic activities in spite of the rising numbers of cases. There have been reported actions to revoke against these seemingly radical government's incentives. 

It has only been late in March that the government started to impose nation-wide measures to counter the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, measures were imposed after hundreds of Indonesians have been diagnosed with the disease and thousands have been in close contact with these  patients. As a result, these actions drastically failed in their aims to reduce the transmission rate and the number of patients kept increasing. The Indonesian government began to generate more harsh and serious responses in May but their effectiveness was questionable. With the government's confidence in reopening the economy, Indonesia rewired all their domestic flights in early June, during the midst of the pandemic. In mid-July, Indonesia was reported to have the lowest testing rate per 1000 people, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Slow responses and the lack of effective measures have led Indonesia to huge economic losses, by the end of 2020, due to Covid-19 the annual GDP growth is expected to be between 5.3 and 7.3 percent lower than a scenario without Covid-19.