4 So what happened? And as Laos-like many other South East Asian countries-starts a phased reopening, particularly to tourists, is its healthcare system ready to live with the virus? The total number of confirmed cases at the time of writing stands at around 187 000.Ī report published in January 2022 by the US think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies found gaps in the country’s testing capacity, medical supplies, and human resources and no solid coordination mechanism among ministries and different levels of government. 1 A survey of antibody prevalence 2 in five provinces suggested there was no widespread transmission of SARS-CoV-2 up to September 2020, 3 while only 49 confirmed cases were confirmed as of 10 April 2021.Ī year later, however, it’s a different story. In a study published in the Lancet, researchers estimated that there were just 4640 excess deaths in Laos between January 2020 and December 2021, fewer than any other country bordering China except for Bhutan and North Korea. “They had this consciousness: we remember SARS and we know we need to do very well early on because if it hits us badly, we lose,” he says. The main traffic point for large lorries and logistics with China was closed, and he didn’t see any covid-19 patients. What he found was public health announcements on disease prevention, a functional but slow surveillance system in place, with a serviceable but small oxygen supply on hand. He expected it would, because a northern border with China would likely have made Laos vulnerable to the disease we now call covid-19. Andrew Silver reportsĪhead of a declaration of a pandemic, in February 2020 Tankred Stöbe, of Médecins Sans Frontières, visited a lower middle income, landlocked country in South East Asia to check whether it needed the agency’s aid. But initial success could not in the long term mask the country’s lack of investment in healthcare and workforce. Bordering China, and one of South East Asia’s poorest countries, Laos at first contained covid-19 well.
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