Australia. New Zealand. Singapore. Vietnam. Japan. Hong Kong. South Korea. Taiwan.
These places in the Asia Pacific region have all been praised for their pandemic response; with several ranked among the best in the world.
All were able to get on top of Covid-19 in 2020 through aggressive actions like strict lockdowns and contact tracing, which were later often replicated by the rest of the world.
Yet in the second year of the pandemic, they are being challenged by new issues. Stronger variants have broken through established defences, creating the worst outbreaks yet in some countries.Meanwhile, many other parts of the world appear to be surging ahead with vaccinations and are beginning to gradually open up again. That means that many of these poster boys of Covid containment are now facing criticism that they don't have a solid plan to get out of their zero-case approach - and that they can't hide from the world forever.
The initial successes
First, let's look at how these states managed to combat Covid so successfully early on. The map below shows case and death rates far lower than those seen in most other nations.Shutting borders was one of the first and most effective measures taken by those eight places when the virus first reached their shores. The fact that many of them are islands made border control relatively easy.
The strict border policies meant either blocking almost all entries or requiring long hotel quarantines to ensure the virus would not take hold in the general population.Australia was the most strict - at one point during India's second wave, it even banned its own citizens from returning because of fears they could carry back the virus.When cases did leak out into the community, there was swift and meticulous contact tracing to stop the virus from spreading.
Singapore, which already had a highly capable police surveillance system, was a prime example of how effective it is to quickly shut down chains of transmission.
Australia plunged state capitals into snap lockdowns over the discovery of even a single case. This happened eight different times for six different cities.
Such policies may be viewed as extreme - but they worked and created a protective bubble. After the initial lockdown during the first Covid wave, all of these places were able to return to a near-normal state.
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