3 SPRING 2022 NO.63 / THOUGHT LEADERSHIP BRIEF patchy vaccination records, such as Hong Kong and Indonesia, with consequent high mortality rates and ongoing restrictions. In turn, this is dragging on economic performance. REASONS FOR VARIATION IN PERFORMANCE A range of studies have examined the reasons for the variation in performance across countries. The initial expectation had been that differences in the quality of national health systems would make a difference to pandemic readiness. But this has turned out not to be the case. In addition to risk factors such as the age structure and development levels of different countries, several institutional factors make a significant difference to COVID outcomes. A study published recently in The Lancet found that ‘Measures of trust in the government and interpersonal trust, as well as less government corruption, had larger, statistically significant associations with lower standardised infection rates as well as higher vaccination rates’.1 Although state capability (as measured by effectiveness of government) is not statistically significant in this study, government effectiveness correlates well with measures of trust in government and the absence of corruption. These are measures in which many Asian economies do well, particularly trust in government – they tend to be below average in terms of government corruption. Similarly, variation in these measures across Asian economies maps well against variation in outcomes. China, for example, ranks strongly in trust measures and above average in perceptions of corruption. Some of the ASEAN countries have lower trust measures as well as weaker measures of corruption. A separate study, also published in The Lancet, found that measures of ‘cultural tightness’ was important in explaining COVID cases and deaths.2 This captures the strength of social norms, which support compliance with COVID restrictions. Many Asian societies have above average levels of cultural tightness, which has supported their relatively strong COVID performance compared to other regions. LOOKING FORWARD However, COVID will be with us for some time. Many people around the world are not fully vaccinated, Omicron is still having a material impact, and future COVID variants are likely. And of course, COVID restrictions remain in place in many parts of Asia. This means that Asia’s performance in COVID outcomes relative to other countries may change. Indeed, there have been big shifts in performance across countries over the course of the pandemic – with some counties better during some phases of managing COVID than others. There is a pronounced ‘winner’s curse’ in COVID management, where countries that perform well in generating strong COVID outcomes then stumble in subsequent phases. For example, countries such as the US and the UK did very badly in the initial stages of COVID management – but then led the world in the nationwide deployment of vaccines. More generally, the ranking of countries on various scoreboards have changed significantly over the course of the COVID pandemic. 1 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00172-6/fulltext 2 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30301-6/fulltext Figure 3. The Corruption Perceptions Index, 2020, for Selected Asian Economies. Source: Transparency International 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 New Zealand Singapore Hong Kong Australia Japan Taiwan South Korea Brunei Malaysia China India Vietnam Indonesia Philippines
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