2020.10: Julia M. Lau, Pandemic Politics, Progress, and Pain: Southeast Asia’s Covid-19 Fight

Across almost all the continents, a long stubborn first wave and emerging second, even third, summer waves of Covid-19 cases are steadily crippling public health, education, and social security systems. This pandemic has exposed weaknesses in governance and public policy in superpowers and the smallest nation-states alike. From the vantage point of Southeast Asia, however, life and businesses have been partially revived, with some signs of a plausible working strategy in some countries, to stake out a strong position in fighting the long fight against Covid-19 until a viable vaccine is globally available. Southeast Asia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, while imperfect and uneven, especially in the initial phase (January-March 2020), has broadly been effective in staving off the worst impacts of the disease, including potential trauma.

In Southeast Asia, previous disease outbreaks entrenched in the collective memory of its governments and people the dire risks of underestimating the impact of such events. Even in the earliest weeks following the declaration of the pandemic, there was recognition that this crisis had the potential to severely impact the region’s trade and tourism sectors.  There is deep institutional memory guiding the present actions and decisions of public health and other officials, hard won through dealing with crises like the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak that originated in China in 2002-2003 and the H1N1 avian flu that originated in Mexico in 2009. In several of the region’s nation-states, the general public’s memory of these previous health crises facilitated the general acceptance of stringent government measures restricting movement of people, social interaction, and business operations.  

Broadly, this national and regional memory and related trauma explain the rapidity with which most governments in Southeast Asia reacted when the first signs of a potentially devastating crisis emerged in Wuhan as early as mid-January 2020, even before the exact nature and shape of the emergency could be determined. There was some initial dithering from some officials, even denial and reluctance to acknowledge the crisis, including the health ministers of Indonesia and Malaysia. But generally, most public health authorities were quick to understand the enormity of the situation. Thai authorities began testing all international arrivals for fever even before any Covid-19 case had been reported in Thailand.  By late March, 2020, the Malaysian, Singaporean, Vietnamese, and Thai governments had closed their borders and restricted domestic movement.  Even though tourism receipts account for thirteen percent of the region’s economy, painful decisions were made to sacrifice tourist revenues to preserve life, even in less developed Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Laos, and the Philippines.

A possible secondary factor accounting for the relative success of most Southeast Asian countries in dealing with Covid-19 is societal discipline and willingness to forgo personal privacy and other liberties. This might be a more useful concept than “regime type” (such as authoritarianism or autocracy outperforming democracy in control and other mechanisms) to explain differences in governments’ abilities to fight the pandemic. Democracies like Taiwan and New Zealand have been effective in their approaches to Covid-19, so regime type is an insufficient explanatory factor. While it might be impossible to generalize about “culture” as a broad influential factor, the following examples will illustrate the degree to which individuals are expected to sacrifice personal comfort for the main goal of limiting the spread of Covid-19. Children in Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia returned to school between May and July, after authorities gave guidance on social distancing and personal protection measures for both teachers and students. Children as young as kindergarten age wear masks while they are in class and are taught to wash their hands, keep their distance, and avoid talking loudly to their friends or teachers. In Singapore, an app called “Trace Together” was unveiled in March 2020, and has been downloaded since then by some 2.4 million residents and citizens. In mid-September, the government started distributing a Trace Together token (a small Bluetooth receiver and transmitter), to the five percent of Singaporeans who have no access to a smartphone and those who prefer not to use the application on their phones. This is a “capture rate” of over half of the local population. The fairly consistent and clear public messaging by most Southeast Asian health authorities, and the abovementioned willingness of most citizens to sacrifice personal comfort and to be diligent about personal hygiene, have reduced the odds of transmission and the resulting national caseloads.

Countries with early detection, rapid testing, and contact tracing mechanisms, and success in mandating sanitation measures, have done best at stemming Covid-19’s onslaught. Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam have kept cases and death tolls low. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Covid-19 regional tracker, as of September 19, 2020, Laos and Cambodia have not lost any citizens to the pandemic, and have had just twenty-three and 275 cases, respectively. Brunei has had three deaths and Singapore, twenty-seven. Compared to the US’s 20,035 cases of Covid-19 per million, the ten Southeast Asian members of ASEAN have had case rates ranging from three per million in Laos to 10,252 per million in Singapore. Admittedly, the situations in the Philippines and Indonesia remain the most worrisome, with the former just overtaking the latter as the region’s hotspot, with 276, 289 cases (2,634 cases per million). Pre-existing weaknesses in public health systems and a lack of infrastructure in both countries, as well as uneven policing of mandated lockdowns and hygiene measures, have complicated the fight against Covid-19. There is also concern that Covid-19 emergency measures in Thailand and Cambodia have provided authorities an excuse to clamp down on human rights and other political activists, negative developments that will bear watching in the coming months.

The Singaporean authorities have designed an efficient, effective tracing and testing regime, and implemented tough measures against anyone who violates quarantine or stay-at-home orders. This includes jail terms, hefty fines, or even deportation and revocation of resident or student visas for foreigners. A sixty year-old British man married to a Singaporean permanent resident was deported and barred from re-entering Singapore in April 2020 for falsely declaring his travel history to the authorities. In July, ten Indian nationals were deported and barred from re-entry for violating rules imposed during the stringent “circuit breaker” period (April 7-June 2, 2020), when individuals were permitted only to leave their residences to purchase food or exercise, and not permitted to gather in groups unless they lived in the same household. If a person under quarantine violates his or her “stay at home” (the stay is in a hotel for returning Singaporeans, residents, and limited categories such as foreigners with work permits or dependents of diplomatic and other visa holders), the first instance of such a violation is punishable by up to S$10,000 in fines and/or up to six months of jail. Business owners who fail to abide by safe distancing regulations are also subject to similar punishment. In August, four of a group of thirteen young people who violated the requirement to socialize in groups of five or less were each fined S$4,000. However, Singapore authorities have adopted the disingenuous tactic of separating “community” (citizens and legal residents) and guest worker data.  Many low-income guest workers live in crowded and unsanitary dormitories, and work permit holders are now gradually returning to Singapore from countries with serious Covid-19 outbreaks, like India, Bangladesh, and Indonesia. Some improvements, such as efforts to build more dormitories for these workers and reduce the capacity of each dorm room are underway, but the majority of the country’s Covid-19 cases continue to be among this population. Of Singapore’s 57,514 cases, more than 51,000 have been foreign work pass and long-term pass holders (categories that allow migrant workers to stay in Singapore for work in construction and other industries).

The outcry among Singaporeans at the government’s initial oversight of the fact that guest worker dormitories could be potential clusters of Covid-19 or its seeming lack of concern for the health of these workers led to some political backlash and vote slippage for the ruling party in the July general elections, and unusually strident criticisms from different sectors of society, especially younger voters. The bright spot is that authorities now mandate biweekly Covid-19 testing for migrant workers, and civil society groups and volunteers seek to improve their living conditions. As of August 2020, all migrant workers except those placed in isolation dorms (quarantined due to close contact with confirmed Covid-19 patients) had been tested for the disease.

What happens now? Southeast Asian populations will demand more accountability and assurance from their leaders as the ill-effects of recession trickle down even farther. There is no clear end to this pandemic, with vaccine development underway but at least one to three years out before a viable, affordable, and accessible global solution is found. Citizens in the region seem to be using this crisis to shine a spotlight on the weaknesses of their governments. There is growing resentment against perceived double standards, such as the recent case of a Malaysian minister skipping his quarantine and sitting in parliament after a trip to Turkey. Consternation at special treatment for the rich and mighty will bring about a harsh political backlash in this environment.

Travel between Malaysia and Singapore has resumed for business people and diplomats, as well as work permit holders who agree to remain for three months within the destination country and be subject to quarantine. Talks are ongoing for various “green lane” arrangements between China and Singapore, and commercial travel to countries such as Japan, New Zealand and Australia will possibly resume in limited fashion by fall or winter from some countries in the region. There is also an opportunity to digitize and automate entire sectors, in a region that has a high penetration rate for mobile phone usage, and to use technology to overcome certain barriers, although there remains the risk of exacerbating inequalities for the poorest and least able.   

Julia M. Lau is an independent scholar and writer with degrees from the National University of Singapore and Georgetown University. For more information see:  https://georgetown.academia.edu/JuliaMLau