Southeast Asia in the Fight against COVID-19 Pandemic. Regional Trends and National Specifics

Abstract

This article attempts to analyze the dynamics of development of the pandemic in the SEA subregion, starting from the first documented cases in the begging of 2020 up until the summer of 2021. A special emphasis is made on such aspects as the response of authorities to the spread of COVID-19, economic conditions during the period of the pandemic, the role of various regional bodies, social and political consequences of the pandemic crisis. The analysis revealed a number of common region-wide traits that came about during the pandemic and became a part of regional specifics of SEA in general, and also individual features of particular local countries. During the fight against the pandemic different ASEAN countries ended up with their own unique models for the behavior of its citizens, state actions and functioning of the economy that were influenced by many factors: capability of the state authority to keep control over the spread of the epidemic, structural differences of national economies, the scope of the state-conducted anti-crisis policies. At this point it still hard to properly evaluate the scale of destructive influence of the pandemic over the countries of the Southeast Asia. Considering the persisting issues with vaccination as well as low economic potential of the most regional states and the depletion of their reserves during the period of intensive anti-crisis support of 2020–2021, the region’s recovery from the ongoing crisis will be uneven and most likely will take more time that in other fast-growing regions of the world.