COVID-19

Businessman Phan Quoc Viet was making his usual prayers at a pagoda in Tay Ninh, a province in southern Vietnam, when the government official’s call came. It was late January, just after the Lunar New Year. Vietnam had detected its first two cases of the new ...

Thailand is extending the state of emergency for a month until May 31, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha announced on Tuesday (April 28), even as new coronavirus cases in the country have been on a decline for the past few weeks. “The extension is necessary. Many orders especially in ...

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, Thailand’s capital was the world’s most visited city. Now Bangkok’s once-bustling streets are quiet. With its struggling economy, the timing of the crisis could not be worse for Thailand. Exports have been falling since 2019 while the GDP growth rate remained one of the lowest ...

Over the past year, severe drought exacerbated by upstream hydropower dams has throttled agricultural productivity, devastated fisheries, and threatened the livelihoods of millions of people in the Mekong River Basin. The coronavirus pandemic is compounding this situation, disrupting supply chains and increasing price volatility for ...

Thai authorities should immediately stop using “anti-fake news” laws to prosecute people critical of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Human Rights Watch said today. A state of emergency, slated to go into effect on March 26, 2020, heightens concerns of greater repression of free ...

While frantically reading news about COVID-19, I wonder why the voices of social scientists and even public health specialists seem so subdued. Clearly, they have a contribution to make in the fight against the coronavirus based on their disciplinary core principles and what has been ...

The General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam said on Friday an estimated five million workers and nearly 85 percent of companies in the country were negatively affected by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the first quarter of 2020. Turbulence was observed in the Vietnamese labor market in Q1 2020 and ...

How can people “stay at home” if they are homeless? Police arrested Tui, a homeless man in the city of Chiang Mai, on April 5 for violating the 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. curfew the Thai government imposed as an emergency measure to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. After police ...

The Finance Ministry is seeking a lifeline for the 2 million disabled and underprivileged people who are adversely affected by the coronavirus outbreak, says finance permanent secretary Prasong Poontaneat. The ministry is working out the details with the Social Development and Human Security Ministry, which has ...

As China shows signs of recovery from the COVID-19 outbreak, speculations abound about what a post-COVID-19 future will look like. Amid the cacophony of voices, consensus is gathering that global power balances will shift. What this shift might entail is fiercely debated. Some see China ...