Clearly, the COVID-19 outbreak in Southeast Asia is worsening, with rising cases across key countries in the region. As an indicator of this, the World Health Organization (WHO) has now called on Southeast Asian states to do more to do more to stop the spread. “Urgent and aggressive measures are the need of the hour. We need to act now,” Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO’s regional director, said on March 17.
That is no exaggeration. The numbers of cases is rising in the region, and spiking in some countries, thereby proving earlier predictions of underestimation to be true. In Cambodia, cases more than doubled overnight on March 17. Indonesia, the region’s most populous country, has now recorded Southeast Asia’s highest number of confirmed cases, at 227 as of March 18, when it recorded no cases just weeks ago.
