One War, Many Battles: COVID-19 in Urban Southeast Asia

Abstract

By any metric, COVID-19 has disrupted Southeast Asia immensely, affecting even those countries that have fared comparatively well. Master narratives of the course of the pandemic across the region have been inescapable which countries sprang into action and which lost time in denial or dithering;which implemented testing and contact-tracing and which remain short on tests and strategies even now;where the death toll and economic costs have been devastating and where they have not been quite so terrible. The latest plot-lines in these unfolding dramas address when and from where vaccines are being secured, how effective authorities are in distributing them to their respective populations, and how they are preparing for and responding to new waves of infection. Show more