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Asian Countries Handle New COVID-19 Cases without Lockdowns

Ralph Jennings

   TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Asian countries faced with late-year spikes in
   COVID-19 are capping the outbreaks and keeping economies on track by
   leveraging earlier experience, namely quick control measures and public
   compliance, sources in the affected spots say.

   Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam have
   reported increases since mid-November as weather cools, citizens fly
   home from more heavily infected countries in the West, or both. Numbers
   had fallen in all six by mid-year after outbreaks in the first half.

   Health officials are now stepping up controls without shuttering
   businesses in most cases or ordering people to stay home. They're still
   leaning heavily on control measures from earlier in the year when
   COVID-19 first appeared, catching Asia by surprise as the first place
   to feel an impact. Those measures include quarantining sick people,
   tracing their contacts and mandating bigger social distances in public.
   International borders remain shut to tourists.

   "The strategy behind these successes is based on the same basic
   factors: prioritizing health above economic concerns, producing
   excellent public communications, enforcing early border controls and
   mandating behavior change," the Lowy Institute research group in
   Australia says in an analysis of Southeast Asia's anti-pandemic
   measures. "These things work."

   People in the region habitually comply with the rules, even where no
   one's on hand to enforce them, as a way to stay healthy, locals say.
   Collective wellbeing is prioritized over individual liberty.

   "If someone in your family just (traveled) somewhere, then all of your
   neighbors will know, and if something happens to you, the neighbors
   themselves will tell about your situation to the police [first
   responders] or to the CDC," said Phuong Hong, 40, a Ho Chi Minh City
   dweller who works in the Vietnamese hotel sector.

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