Covid 19 In Asia

This is a book for an extraordinary time, about a pandemic for which there is no modern precedent. It is an edited collection of original essays on Asia's legal and policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, which, in a matter of months, swept around the globe, infecting millions. It transformed daily life in almost every corner of the planet: lockdowns of cities and entire countries, physical distancing and quarantines, travel restrictions and border controls, movement-tracking technology, mandatory closures of all but essential services, economic devastation and mass unemployment, and government assistance programs on record-breaking scales. Yet a pandemic on this scale, under contemporary conditions of globalization, has left governments and their advisors scrambling to improvise solutions, often themselves unprecedented in modern times, such as the initial lockdown of Wuhan. This collection of essays analyzes law and policy responses across Asia, identifying cross-cutting themes and challenges. It taps the collective knowledge of an interdisciplinary team of sixty-one researchers both in the service of policy development, and with the goal of establishing a scholarly baseline for research after the storm has passed. The collection begins with an epidemiological overview and survey of the law and policy themes. The jurisdiction-specific case studies and cross-cutting thematic essays cover five topics: first wave containment measures; emergency powers; technology, science, and expertise; politics, religion, and governance; and economy, climate, and sustainability. Chapter 20: Cambodia: Public Health, Economic, and Political Dimensions by Ratana Ly, Vandanet Hing, & Kimsan Soy is available for free.

COVID-19 has presented huge challenges to governments, businesses, civil societies, and people from all walks of life, but its impact has been highly variegated, affecting society in multiple negative ways, with uneven geographical and socioeconomic patterns. The crisis revealed existing contradictions and inequalities in society, compelling us to question what it means to return to “normal” and what insights can be gleaned from Southeast Asia for thinking about a post-pandemic world. In this regard, this edited volume collects the informed views of an ensemble of social scientists – area studies, development studies, and legal scholars; anthropologists, architects, economists, geographers, planners, sociologists, and urbanists; representing academic institutions, activist and charitable organisations, policy and research institutes, and areas of professional practice – who recognise the necessity of critical commentary and engaged scholarship. These contributions represent a wide-ranging set of views, collectively producing a compilation of reflections on the following three themes in particular: (1) Urbanisation, digital infrastructures, economies, and the environment; (2) Migrants, (im)mobilities, and borders; and (3) Collective action, communities, and mutual action. Overall, this edited volume first aims to speak from a situated position in relevant debates to challenge knowledge about the pandemic that has assigned selective and inequitable visibility to issues, people, or places, or which through its inferential or interpretive capacity has worked to set social expectations or assign validity to certain interventions with a bearing on the pandemic’s course and the future it has foretold. Second, it aims to advance or renew understandings of social challenges, risks, or inequities that were already in place, and which, without further or better action, are to be features of our “post-pandemic world” as well. This volume also contributes to the ongoing efforts to de-centre and decolonise knowledge production. It endeavours to help secure a place within these debates for a region that was among the first outside of East Asia to be forced to contend with COVID-19 in a substantial way and which has evinced a marked and instructive diversity and dynamism in its fortunes.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has unleashed unparalleled challenges. At the same time, it offers a window to rethink Asia’s most fundamental development policies and strategies to address inequality, socioeconomic vulnerability, and environmental challenges. This publication gathers blogs and short policy pieces contributed by ADB staff and experts in an attempt to tackle immediate challenges and prepare for what may lie beyond the horizon. It covers a broad range of development challenges and highlights the crucial role of rapid adoption of digital technologies, adequate supply of quality infrastructure, disaster risk management, and strengthening regional cooperation for a resilient and sustainable future by shaping post-pandemic conditions.

On March 12th 2020, World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spreading of the new virus, 2019-nCoV, a pandemic. In Asia, the virus, more commonly referred to as COVID-19, has been spreading since the end of December. To contain the public health threat, almost all countries enforced a variety of measures, including lockdowns, to minimize face-to-face human interactions between the infected and the susceptible.While these vigilant measures save lives, they also generate a substantial negative economic shock that immediately halts demand and significantly disrupts supply, global production value chain and trade. The consequences are dire — considerable decline in output, massive surge in unemployment, countless bankruptcy cases, and unrelentless worries over financial stability. The result, a worldwide economic setback, is more severe than that experienced during the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-2009.Asia's experiences with COVID-19 precede that in the West. This fortuitous timing allows Asia to share its learnings drawn from experiences to benefit the world.The Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research's (ABFER) community has gathered a collection of insights to inform the public. Besides providing access to research on the pandemic conducted in Asia, these commentaries offer comprehensive information on the effects of the pandemic, the effectiveness of measures employed to contain it and the subsequent economic impacts from such implementation. With granular analyses of government policies and their associated economic rescue packages, these commentaries elucidate the hard trade-offs between public health protection and economic security. Finally, the commentaries address the broader impact of the pandemic on international trade, global value chains and society.

The Covid-19 pandemic triggered the first global public health emergency since 1918, the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression, and the greatest geopolitical tensions in decades. Global governance mechanisms failed. Yet, East Asian countries (with caveats) managed to control Covid-19 better than most other countries and to increase their cooperation toward economic integration, despite their position on the security frontline. What explains this East Asian Covid paradox in a region devoid of strong regional institutions? This Element argues that high levels of institutional preparation, social cohesion, and global strategic reinforcement in a context of situational convergence explain the results. It relies on high-level interviews and case studies across the region.

Every nation in Asia has dealt with COVID-19 differently and with varying levels of success in the absence of clear and effective leadership from the WHO. As a result, the WHO's role in Asia as a global health organization is coming under increasing pressure. As its credibility is slowly being eroded by public displays of incompetence and negligence, it has also become an arena of contestation. Moreover, while the pandemic continues to undermine the future of global health governance as a whole, the highly interdependent economies in Asia have exposed the speed with which pandemics can spread, as intensive regional travel and business connections have caused every area in the region to be hit hard. The migrant labor necessary to sustain globalized economies has been strained and the security of international workers is now more precarious than ever, as millions have been left stranded, seen their entry blocked, or have limited access to health services. This volume provides an accessible framework for the understanding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia, with a specific emphasis on global governance in health and labor.

Using "risk" as a conceptual lens, this book analyzes how communities across East Asia responded to the disruption unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The contributors to this book look at how governments, societies, and individuals have perceived, experienced, dealt with and interpreted the pandemic and the transformations it has brought across countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. They examine pressing concerns such as infodemic, digital health literacy, media cynicism, telework, and digital inequalities in conjunction with issues such as public trust, identity formation, nationalism, and social fragmentation. They look at a wide range of questions relating to communication, mediation, and reactions to the challenges of the pandemic. An insightful resource for scholars of risk studies and of East Asian societies, the book is also a valuable reference for students and researchers of media and communication studies and sociology.

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been an unprecedented, once-in-a-century gamechanger for the world. The central focus of Post-COVID Asia is the new world that will emerge after the coronavirus. In particular, this book explores how deglobalization will proceed in the post-COVID world and what kind of impact deglobalization will have on Asian economies. After all, in the last few decades, Asia has leveraged globalization to become the world's fastest-growing, most dynamic region. Therefore, an urgent challenge facing Asian economies is to figure out how to survive and thrive when the globalization which served them so well is giving way to deglobalization.Opportunities have emerged for Asian economies amid the winding down of the third wave of globalization. In fact, the next wave of globalization is already beginning to take shape, in tandem with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is full of exciting new technologies. This book offers insights that would help governments, companies and people in Asia to ride the next wave of globalization to power their prosperity.

This collection of essays provides analyses of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia. It includes interpretations by leading scholars in anthropology, food studies, history, media studies, political science, and visual studies, who examine the political, social, economic, and cultural impact of COVID-19 in China, India, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and beyond.

This book aims at shedding light on the reasons why the death rates during the pandemic were so high in Central Asia. More specifically, this book proposes analysis on why individuals did not follow the sanitary rules imposed by their respective government and on the role played by misinformation. Secondly, it also examines the impact of Sinophobia in Central Asia and the future challenges this feeling may pose on the authorities in the near future. Lastly, this book also proposes analysis of how the pandemic has contributed to show the inherent vulnerabilities of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan by focusing on their immediate and future political consequences.