Lockdowns in ASEAN: Winning the Pandemic War SYNOPSIS COMMENTARY

February 2021 marks the end of a year of COVID-19, and the opportunity to re-visit and improve the way lockdowns are implemented in the year ahead. [...] While over nine types of COVID-19 vaccines have already been developed, it will take time to expand production and to roll these out, with only two billion doses of the vaccines projected by the end of 2021; this leaves practically the remaining three-fourths of the world waiting. [...] Each state has its own maximum healthcare capacity, which is the combination of the infrastructure to provide due treatment, and the sufficiency of support to subsidise treatments, especially to poorer populace. [...] In both cases, the lockdown allowed for the number of active cases (total cases minus recoveries/deaths) to fall; this means the number of new infections per day were slower than (which takes about 14 days per person) the growth in the number of new infections occurring. [...] This required a “war-time” level of re-alignment and deployment of manpower, to actively monitor the movements of people at the time of COVID-19.