The ASEAN Way: Challenges, Issues, and Opportunities during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic brought tremendous change to everyone’s lifestyle as well as the social, political, and economic landscape. This novel global health crisis has challenged every state’s healthcare system regardless of being a highly developed, newly developed, or developing economies. The southeast Asian region has been one of the heavily hit regions in the world because of its proximity to China, where the virus originated and the vulnerability of their lesser developed healthcare systems. However, despite these challenges to public health governance, these South East Asian countries were able to come up with innovative, inclusive, and effective public health policies, programs, and strategies to address the pandemic. Using the Global Health Governance theory, the study looked into four (4) thematic areas: Actions of the Government, Actions of the Private Sector, Criticisms of the People, and the Effects on the Economy to further gauge on the landscape of the effects of the pandemic to the region. The researcher concluded from these responses to mitigate the effects of the pandemic and their continuing efforts to balance public health and socio-economic development agenda.