A police officer checks the documents of a driver at a roadblock during lockdown ahead of the Eid al-Fitr celebrations in an effort to prevent a large-scale transmission of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia May 10, 2021. REUTERS/Lim Huey Teng
June 1, 2021: Vaccines are definitely working in the West, where some countries are deemed by health experts as months, if not weeks, away from being able to emerge from the health crisis, but Southeast Asia is increasingly where the attention is on, with the word “new epicentre” now looking likelier than ever before.
A sharp rise, which in many cases involve new variants, in Southeast Asia has prompted new restrictions, factory closures and hectic vaccination programmes. On a per capita basis, new cases in Malaysia are equalling those of India and sometimes even have soared past them. Cases in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and East Timor have more than doubled in recent weeks.
Thailand’s death toll has risen ten folds over the past two months. Vietnam has been alarmed by a possible combination of Indian and UK variants, something having a far-greater airborne threat. Myanmar’s Indian border has reported a scary surge.
Calls for more global cooperation on vaccines are growing louder and louder, despite promising signs in the West. This is not least because the world’s economy in this globalised era depends on everybody’s survival. Restrictions, for example, will seriously hamper productivity and income of countries that appear safe from COVID-19.
