COVID-19 and the ASEAN responses: Comparison and analysis through policy science


 The World Health Organisation (WHO) announced the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a pandemic on March 11th, 2020. The pandemic has brought havoc globally as more than 190 countries and territories are affected as of 30 April 2030. COVID-19 crisis suggests that no country can deal with the pandemic alone. International cooperation including regional cooperation is essential for any country to survive COVID-19. We are particularly interested in Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN) cooperation and performance under COVID-19 because it has been one of the regions where regional cooperation on health security has been functioning based on lessons from SARS 2003 and H1N1 2009. The “One Vision, One Identity, One Community” of ASEAN has merits under COVID-19 response but remains invisible. The method encompasses analysis of published materials issued by and accessible from the ASEAN website, complemented with analysis for media articles including social media, supported by published academic journal articles. All of the authors have expertise on ASEAN policies in the field of health, disasters, and regional policy and planning. Some authors have also worked from various international organizations working on issues related to the ASEAN region.
 This paper aims to document and analyse how ASEAN member states respond to COVID-19. It asks how to cooperate under the One-ASEAN-One Response framework in the context of COVID-19. This paper also compares the 10 member states' policy responses to COVID-19 from January to April 2020. We utilise the framework of policy sciences to analyse the responses. We found that the early regional response was slow and lack of unity (January–February 2020). Extensive early measures taken by each member state are the key to the success to curb the spread of the virus. Although, during March and April 2020, ASEAN has reconvened and utilised its existing health regional mechanism to try to have a coherent response to COVID-19 impacts. Strengthening future collaboration should be implemented by recognizing that there is a more coherent, multi sectoral, multi stakeholders and whole-of-ASEAN Community approach in ensuring ASEAN's timely and effective response to the pandemic. Finally, we call for the COVID-19 recovery should allow for healthy, just, resilient and sustainable ASEAN.



ASEAN Plus Three Senior Officials Meeting for Health Development (APT SOMHD) Mechanism Responding to COVID-19 ASEAN Health Ministers and ASEAN Plus Three Health Ministers in Enhancing Cooperation on COVID-19 ASEAN Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) Network for public health emergencies ASEAN BioDiaspora Virtual Centre (ABVC) for Big Data Analytics and Visualisation ASEAN Coordinating Council Working Group (ACCWG) on Public Health Emergencies ASEAN Plus Three Field Epidemiology Training Network (ASEAN+3 FETN) ASEAN Risk Assessment and Risk Communication Centre (ARARC)
Public health laboratories network under the ASEAN Health Cluster 2 on Responding to All Hazards and Emerging Threats Regional Public Health Laboratories Network (RPHL) through the Global Health Security Agenda platform This paper aims to document and analyse how ASEAN member states respond to COVID-19. We argue that existing regional health collaboration since 2003 and coupled with the One-ASEAN-One Response framework should have provided a strong foundation for the region to deal with the impact of COVID-19. We find that the early (January -February 2020) regional response was slow and lack of coherence.
Extensive early measures taken by each member state are the key to the success to curb the spread of the virus. Although, between March and April 2020, ASEAN reconvened and utilised its existing health regional mechanism to try to have a coherent response to COVID-19 impacts. The specific objectives are: 1. To review the impacts of COVID-19 at the ASEAN level and analise recent ASEAN regional responses specifically to COVID-19 under the light of existing health security cooperation framework.

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Journal Pre-proof 2. To report country's responses to COVID-19 from February to April 2020, 3. To compare these responses utilising policy science viewpoints and identify lessons learnt on how to strengthen regional responses and in the long term, the health systems resilience of ASEAN and its member states.
The paper is developed primarily through analysis of published materials issued by and accessible from the ASEAN website, complemented with analysis for media articles including social media. Published academic journal articles are used in the analysis. All of the authors have expertise on ASEAN policies in the field of health, disasters, and regional policy and planning. Some authors have worked for international organisations working on issues related to the ASEAN region. The paper is organised as follows.
Section 1 examines the aim, objectives and rationale for the paper. The section further reviews existing and relevant regional mechanisms. Section 2 documents COVID-19 impacts at the regional scale and key health-responses responses coordinated by the ASEAN. Section 3 compares health-related and broader responses amongst the 10 countries. In Section 4, using the policy science viewpoints proposed by Weible  manufacturing sectors and other services [4] . Employment and livelihood people of the region are also significantly affected [5] . In ASEAN, the uncertainties brought about by J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof the pandemic also triggered a swift outflow of capital, causing a dive in the markets and a rapid depreciation of the exchange rates across the region. [1] Despite the disruption of COVID-19 to the economic sector, the ADB has forecast the economic growth of Southeast Asia will be around 1 % (ADB, 2020). [ Figure 1 shows the Epi curve of confirmed cases by 26 April 2020 (ASEAN, 2020b).  While the early effort of ASEAN has been limited to communication exchange and information sharing among member states on COVID-19 situation and response updates. A further commitment of concerted efforts and collective action is needed to prevent and eliminate the risk of pandemic in the region particularly to assist the Member States that suffer the most of social and economic from the impact of pandemic. Table 2 summarises the timeline of key responses.

Country specific responses
This section reports government responses taken by the individual countries. It has been proposed that country-based mitigation is extremely important to fight COVID-19 as country is the first line of defence against it [8] .

Brunei Darussalam
Brunei is a tiny country with the population around 436,647 has emerged as good example of a country that provides care, concern, and preparedness not only to its citizens but also to foreign and tourist [9] .The handling of the pandemic by the Sultan Bolkiah has been argued as transparent and robust. The first case was declared on 9 March 2020. Brunei has successfully contained the virus in small number cases March 15 [10] . All Bruneians returning to the country undergo mandatory isolation at quarantine facilities [11] .Brunei has entirely implemented lockdown and closed its access from sea, air on March 24 [12] .Restrictions of public gathering, work from home, mosque and other worship places has been closed. The government also took measures to ensure the welfare of its citizens. The Ministry has issued a directive to all employers to pay salaries during the quarantine to its employees. On April 1, it introduced economic stimulus for micro, small and medium enterprises for BND250 million. The success of Brunei in containing the virus is early action and implemented precautionary measures and deploy and mobilize all funding and resources to ease the impact of the pandemic.

Cambodia
The population of Cambodia is around 16 million people. The first confirmed cases of coronavirus in Cambodia has been reported on 27 January 2020 [13] . The country has confirmed 122 cases of COVID-19 so far and no deaths have been reported [14] . No new cases were reported in Cambodia for twelve consecutive days [15] . Despite this situation Cambodia Prime Minister urged people to remain vigilant as there is no medicine to cure this infectious disease [16] . Cambodia has lowest confirmed cases compared to other ASEAN countries despite criticism of lack testing [17] . Several measures that have been adopted by The Royal government of Cambodia include imposed quarantine, cancel the celebrations of the Khmer New Year, issued economic stimulus [18] . In addition, the government also passed state of emergency law on 10 April 2020 granting the country's autocratic leader, Hun Sen, vast new powers allowing the government to carry out unlimited surveillance of telecommunications and to control the press and social media [19] . Human rights experts argued that this law expected to weaken democracy right in the country.
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Indonesia
Indonesia is the most populous country among ASEAN members with 272 million people. The risk in suffering most due to the coronavirus pandemic is amounting as the quality of health infrastructure has been inadequate. This is shown by the number cases continues to rise and second in the region after Singapore and the mortality rate of 8,9 to 9 % is one of the highest in the Southeast Asia and the world [20] . [ [29] . Despite the confirmed cases being relatively small compared to other ASEAN countries, there is a fear of a major outbreak due to slow widespread testing in the country [30] . The United Nations has announced a plan to donate 50,000 testing kits to Myanmar, supplementing previous donations of 3000 from Singapore and 5,000 from South Korea [31] .The country is vulnerable, the public health system in Myanmar is woefully unsuited in response for a pandemic scale [32] . In addition, there is no safety net in Myanmar which causes the poor to be the most vulnerable groups in times of health and economic crisis as an impact of pandemic [33] . [5] The lockdown will hurt the livelihood and food security of the country [34] . Yangon imposed lockdown measures in seven townships from 6 PM on 18 April 2020 through Ministry of Health and Sport Order No. 38/2020 the Prevention and Control of Communicable Diseases Law [35] . To ease the impact of the pandemic the government announced an initial stimulus package including 100 billion kyats (nearly US $ 70 million worth of loan). The COVID-19 fund will be used to assist garment and manufacturing, hotel and tourism business as well as small and medium size enterprises owned by local people [36] .

The Philippines
The Philippines is the second most populous country in Asean with 106 million.
The first imported case of COVID-19 was reported in January 2020 and the first local

Singapore
Singapore with a population around 5,6 million confirmed its first imported case from Wuhan, China, on 23rd January 2020 (Abdullah and Salamat, 2020). Singapore was hailed globally as a model for emulation and replication by governments,

Thailand
Thailand with the population of almost 70 million is the first country in ASEAN and outside china infected by COVID-19 on 13 January 2020. [1] Thai government has announced partial lock down to contain the spread of the virus (Hinjoy et al 2020  [39] . Together with stopping issuing visas for foreigners from infected nations, all international flights coming to or departing from the pandemic areas were suspended as soon as the first case was confirmed [40] . Vietnam temporarily cleared from the pandemic at the end of April 2020. Vietnam required all Vietnamese and international visitors who returned from abroad to quarantine at centralized facilities for 14 days, followed by the implementation of nationwide quarantine on April 1 st , 2020 [41] . To further prevent the spread of this pandemic, border crossings between Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos were temporarily closed.
All of the above discussion is summarised in Table 3 and 4 below.
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Implementation and administration
Administrative fragmentation and decentralization complicate implementation Front-line workers exercise discretion and self-regulation Co-production requires overcoming collective action challenges Communication and perception

6.Emotions and public policy
Governments appeal to emotions to help legitimize policy responses and steer public reactions Emotionally charged language can recall cultural and historical contexts Policy responses force a reevaluation of the emotional spheres in societies 7. Narratives and messaging Governments attempt to provide sufficient information in a timely manner to the public Governments attempt to provide information that is accurate and non-contradictory to the public Governments can spawn controversies by engaging in speculations

Crisis response and management
There are similarities and differences in crisis response and management in every

Global policymaking and transnational administration
There is a growing inequality in ASEAN as an impact to COVID-19. Poverty is one reason some ASEAN countries could not implement strict lockdown such as in  J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f cities in Indonesia in Jakarta for example adopted until 23 April 2020 and this has been extended. In Singapore, closure of the workplace has to be implemented for 28 days -circuit breakers‖ from April 3, 2020. The Philippines also implemented community quarantine in metro Manila on 13 of March 2020 and in other parts of its region. The community needs to comply with strict measures. Social distancing was also adopted in 12 cities in Vietnam [1] .

Emotions and public policy
Succeed in changing behavior during COVID-19 include establishing trust in health authorities, recommendation and information.Citizen willingness to cooperate to social distancing and understanding the threat with maintaining good hygiene and immune systems have been the key to cope with pandemic. However, for many social distancing is not an option. For example, in Philippine as they struggle to meet daily needs, they fear death from hunger and anxiety rather than from infection.  Indonesia also proposed the establishment of an APT country special task force for a pandemic whose task would be to provide comprehensive steps to strengthen the resilience of the APT Region in the face of a future pandemic. [ii] The pandemic however actually has exposed disparity in terms of capacity, role and influence of communities of

Policy success and failure
During COVID-19 onset during January -February 2020, ASEAN's -One ASEAN -One Response‖ (OAOR) framework was put to the test. Despite OAOR's main focus on natural hazards, however, some of the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management (ACDM) members have been the leading agencies responding to COVID-19 such as BNPB in Indonesia. In addition, despite being proven relatively successful in the past, the ASEAN coordinated response to COVID-19 seems less visible in the first quarter of 2020. COVID-19 impact on ASEAN economy will be tremendous. Unfortunately, ASEAN did not discuss quite meaningfully to protect its interest in the integrity of ASEAN Economic Communities including its Blueprint 2025 that would offer US$2.6 trillion for over 622 million people (https://asean.org/asean-economic-community/) that have been implemented since 2016.
The -One Vision, One Identity, One Community‖ seems to be an utopia as each ASEAN member state treats their borders as their absolute sovereignty while lacks the collective 5. Toward broader ASEAN health system resilience This paper has documented and analysed ASEAN as a regional organisation and the 10 member states respond to COVID-19. Our main finding is that regional responses in January and 2020 were considerably slow and lack of unity. Extensive early measures laid with the member states, which were the key to the success to curb the spread of the virus. In March and April 2020, ASEAN has actively reconvened and utilised its existing health regional mechanism to try to have a coherent response to COVID-19 impacts. There is more action that needs to be done to curb the virus in the region.
Strengthening future collaboration should be implemented by recognizing that there is a more coherent, multi sectoral, multi stakeholders and whole-of-ASEAN Community approach in ensuring ASEAN's timely and effective response to the pandemic.
COVID-19 shows that shocks and changes can occur anytime and at different scales, and health systems need to have the ability to absorb, adapt and transform in dealing with the shocks. This concept is called health systems resilience [51] . Resilience is critical for health systems to be able to avoid disruption, collapse or even total failure. Health systems need to have the following six functions to be able to deliver safe, quality and sound health services: leadership and governance, information, health workforce, medical products, service delivery and financing [52] . We have discussed in detail in Section 4 how leadership and time and tactful national governance is the key factor for successful COVID-19 early response. The provision of accurate, timely, and relevant information which is delivered in a clear and authoritative manner helps to build trust from the public to government and in turn encourage compliance to behavioural changes needed and adherence to the movement restriction. The next three functions are related to the health systems capacity of the health workforce, medical products and service delivery. Flattening the curve is about early and decisive actions to delay the J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f impacts reaching the peak and lowering the peak as well so that the health system will have more time to prepare and get on top of the impacts. The last issue is about financing, which is related to short-term and urgent needs for testing, tracing, and treatment from COVID-10 and also larger, longer term financial stimulus to deal with COVID-19 impacts as well as investment in health system to be better prepared for pandemic, or any other large scale health emergencies. within the global frameworks. ASEAN and its whole communities need to build health system resilience that is also just, green, and sustainable.
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