Region braces for third virus wave
Asia-Pacific left vulnerable by low vaccination rates
In any normal year, Somchai Maneetawat’s restaurant in the Thai tourist site of Phuket would be full. But as brutal second and third waves of Covid-19 hit south-east and east Asia, a region that managed to largely contain infections and deaths last year, his business is on the brink of collapse.
Maneetawat’s profits had already plunged by 95 per cent. Now the much-awaited July scrapping of quarantine for vaccinated tourists visiting the golden sands of Phuket may be under threat, amid recordbreaking coronavirus case loads and a sluggish jab rollout.
“This wave is definitely worse for business than the other two,” he said.
It’s a similar story throughout the region, where countries who escaped relatively unscathed last year are now tightening curbs again amid an alarming surge in infections.
Japan’s capital Tokyo is currently under a state of emergency. South Korea, hampered by a tight supply of vaccines, is struggling to beat back an uptick of daily infections swinging between 500 and 700 a day. In Vietnam, 70,000 people are in quarantine as health authorities brace for a potential wave of about 30,000 cases. Even Taiwan, which has kept its case count to about 2000 and seen only 12 deaths, last week banned large gatherings amid an unprecedented cluster initially linked to airline pilots.
Experts have warned that as a result, the region will struggle to reopen even as the rest of the world emerges from the pandemic. For countries such as Thailand, which depends heavily on its tourism industry, the economic impact could be devastating.
The Government, which was forced to redirect limited vaccine supplies to hot spots as fresh clusters of infections hit Bangkok, has been criticised for failing to secure enough jabs and relying on just two suppliers — China’s Sinovac and AstraZeneca.
Supplies of Sputnik V and Pfizer/ BioNTech are expected later this year. Less than 3 per cent of Thailand’s population has been vaccinated and mass immunisation is not expected before June. A target of vaccinating 70 per cent of Phuket by July to accommodate tourists is now unlikely. It’s a situation mirrored across the region, with tiny Singapore one of few countries that has managed to give a dose to more than 30 per cent of its population. Vietnam’s jab rate is as low as 0.52 per cent.
South-west and east Asia’s struggle to launch mass vaccination programmes is generally down to the crunch in global supply and late orders placed by their governments.
But the longer it takes, the bigger the risk of a second or third wave of the likes being seen in India.
“The numbers are up but they’re still tiny — I mean, if we plotted them on a chart, they’d still be well below any of our peaks, so we have to have some relativity,” said Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at Edinburgh University Medical School. “They’re poorer countries. Given their resources and their wealth, they’ve done extraordinarily well.”
The question of whether Asia may ultimately fall behind the UK, US and Europe is difficult to answer.
Mortality rates have so far been low in most countries. Even allowing for undercounting, total deaths are 11,249 in Japan, 1,893 in South Korea, 518 in Thailand, 35 in Vietnam and 12 in Taiwan.
“Even if the United States is successful in vaccinating its people and opening up, if 500,000 people died, who did better?” said Dr Jerome Kim, the director general of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul, South Korea.