In late January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the outbreak of a new and deadly form of coronavirus in China, marking the pandemic as a global health emergency. Because of its close proximity to China and the contiguous nature of the regional landscape, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) was among the first regions of the world to be affected by the freely-moving virus.
The rising number of infections within Asean was also fuelled by the bloc's business activities with China, such as those involving tourism, business travel and supply chain. Despite this initial surge in case numbers, the latter half of 2020 saw life in Southeast Asia return to relative normality while the rest of the world reeled from the effects of Covid-19 infections and the restrictive measures enforced in an attempt to contain the outbreak.
One year on and the scenario has turned upside down with the so-called third wave of the pandemic hitting the Southeast Asian region much harder than in the previous year while other regions, such as Europe and America, have become increasingly resilient to the situation as the success of their vaccination programmes finally enabled them to cope with the disease.
In response to this third wave, Southeast Asian nations have been implementing stricter measures aimed at reducing the surge in Covid-19 cases. Malaysia has resorted to a month-long national lockdown, while Vietnam has imposed a 21-day quarantine on all international arrivals into the country and anyone who has been in close contact with infected patients.
At different extremes of the lockdown paradigm, Singapore has turned to the same method it used before, which, in the words of TIME magazine journalist Amy Gunia, is described as imposing "lockdown-like conditions", while the Cambodian government has been criticised by human rights activists for the severity of the lockdown it has imposed as it has restricted people's ability to buy food.
Looking at the bigger picture in Southeast Asia, the time has come to look beyond the pros and cons of individual country's efforts within the region. There are great lessons to be learnt, not from the faraway regions of Europe or America, but from one of our closer neighbours in Asia. Throughout the pandemic, South Korea has emerged as an apotheosis of virus management for the way it has handled the Covid-19 outbreak.
South Korea's preventive approach to the pandemic has received praise from the WHO, while the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres echoed these sentiments, praising South Korea's success in combating climate change and handling the coronavirus outbreak simultaneously.
Dr Renu Garg, a medical advisor for the WHO, said in an online seminar titled "Virus/Vaccine Dynamics/Challenges in the Mekong Region: The Regionalisation Imperative?" held in late June by the Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS), Chulalongkorn University, that the best means of preventing Covid-19 from spreading is through public health suppression measures such as vaccination programmes. South Korea is known for delivering such measures.
The development and implementation of a coordinated nationwide testing programme has been at the forefront of South Korea's fight against Covid-19. Through this highly-praised process, the number of newly infected patients has reduced significantly without the need for resorting to widespread restrictions or disrupting the economy as a result of locking down entire regions. Seoul has successfully repressed the spread of Covid-19 with its government's responsive reaction to the pandemic.
The success of South Korea's battle against Covid-19 has been built on the wide network of testing and other key measures put in place by Seoul. Under the purview of the Emergency Use Authorisation (EUA), the first test kits were dispensed to private medical sectors in February 2020 allowing them to start examining alleged cases at the outset of the pandemic.
Following the launch of the project in February 2020, the number of its Covid-19 diagnostic testing sites increased rapidly to 100 and then 600 by April and September 2020 respectively. These diagnostic testing locations are divided into three categories. The first type is stations located in and around hospitals, while the second type is drive-through stations and the last type is walk-through stations.
Complementing its nationwide public testing programmes, South Korea's public authorities, especially the Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), have been praised for their exceptional communication in disseminating Covid-19 related news effectively to the public. They have been able to trace the geographic footprints of all the infected cases and then report essential information quickly to the people via mobile texts and online websites. Another significant factor in South Korea's success in handling the pandemic has been the general public's unhesitating adherence to the government's guidelines, which include applying social-distancing measures and wearing medical face masks in public spaces.
However, the South Korean government's most prudential approach has been in making it compulsory for test results to be reported back so that personal data of potential and confirmed cases can be easily assessed. South Korea has been successful in contact tracing throughout the pandemic because of how easily personal data in relation to test results can be so conveniently accessed.
Regarding the responsibilities of South Korea's private sector in the control of infectious diseases, its role has undergone considerable reform since the MERS outbreak almost a decade earlier. One important lesson that South Korea learned from its handling of MERS-related incidents is that medical care and quarantine should be examined separately. Despite being a hub of medical technologies and knowledge, hospital space was found to have failed in providing quality standard quarantine during the MERS outbreak. Instead, hospitals turned to be centres of infection. As a result, the budget assigned to managing quarantine has been expanded.
The South Korean government last year substantially raised its budget to cope with Covid-19 to US$135 million (4.5 billion baht) or a 182% increase from its 2015 spending on contagious disease handling, according to research conducted by Sora Lee, a researcher at the School of Regulation and Global Governance of the Australian National University (ANU).
The increase in budget covers the purchasing of technologies related to preventive treatment for emerging contagious diseases, antiviral products and personal protective equipment. In addition, the South Korean government has also invested in research and development projects aimed at developing preventive technologies, test kits, and Covid vaccines.
South Korea has also shown a willingness to deliver a public and private partnership strategy during the Covid-19 crisis. A collaboration between the KSLM (Korean Society Laboratory Medicine) and KCDC immediately started researching methods of diagnosis for the coronavirus right after they received genome sequence data provided by China in January 2020.
In late January 2020, the KSLM and KCDC convened a meeting to inform test kit developers in Seoul to initiate "emergency-use authorisation" that enables the use of unapproved test kits in a time of crisis. As a result, this emergency-use authorisation enabled some kit makers to produce a maximum of 130,000 test kits per day.
South Korea's effectiveness in diagnostics stems from the capabilities of the country's laboratory physicians, with more than 1,100 specialists in virus testing. In addition, the South Korean government attempted to prevent the financial risk from developing tests by investing in commercial test developers.
According to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the KDCA called a meeting with some of these developers in order to support their efforts to develop and submit the EUA appeal for molecular diagnostic tests. The South Korean government reassured private test developers that minimum quantities of tests would be purchased once the tests were authorised and authenticated for use. In this way, any concerns over financial risk from developing SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic tests would be absolved.
Southeast Asia might have its own reasons for not working cooperatively through Asean as a unifying organisation. The member nations could argue, as they usually do, that Southeast Asia is a "unique" region made up of countries that all have different approaches to dealing with this circumstance or that situation. However, whether they do so independent of each other or as part of a unified approach, Asean members can learn from South Korea and how it has dealt with the pandemic so successfully, be it in the way it invested wisely, how the country mitigated financial risks for manufacturers, or how they developed and implemented nationwide testing.
Thanapat Pekanan is a research associate with the Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS) at Chulalongkorn University's Faculty of Political Science.
