Image source: Torbenbrinker – CC BY-SA 3.0
On June 11, Laos (Lao People’s Democratic Republic) – a country of 7 million people in Southeast Asia – said it had temporarily prevailed over COVID-19. Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith mentioned that his country had “gained an important victory in the first campaign against this vicious enemy”. The first one case of COVID-19 detected in Laos were recorded on March 24; a total of 19 people had been infected with the virus by April 12and after 58 days without a new case—the last patient was dump June 9. There have been no new cases of COVID-19 in Laos since April 12 (93 days with no new cases as of July 14). There was no death of COVID-19 in Laos.
Laos is a landlocked country, surrounded by the People’s Republic of China, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia. It shares a 423 kilometer border with China, through which traders and tourists regularly travel. Nevertheless, Laos, like its neighbor Vietnam, has not recorded any deaths from COVID-19. Laos has been particularly attentive to the possibility of transmission by travelers who have crossed neighboring countries (this is why they or they are held in quarantine centers for two weeks).
How did Laos do it?
The news has arrived from Wuhan, China in the first week of January of the spread of a new coronavirus. On January 6, the Prime Minister of Laos, Thongloun, was in beijing for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, where their conversations focused on economic development. In particular, the leaders of the two countries discussed the China-Laos railway, which has been under construction since 2016 and will stretch 414 kilometers from Vientiane (capital of Laos) to Boten (on the China-Laos border). At the time, too little was known about the coronavirus for it to have likely been the focus of the meeting. Until January 20, it was not clear that this virus could be transmitted from human to human. As soon as the World Health Organization declared a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, the government of Laos installation a task force committee for the prevention and control of COVID-19 to monitor the virus and prevent its spread in Laos.
The first sign of trouble appeared February 1st, when Zhang Biao, who had recently visited Laos, tested positive for the virus upon returning to Chongqing, China. On January 26, Zhang arrived in Vientiane on a China Express Airlines flight as part of a tour group. He traveled with the group to Vang Vieng, a tourist destination four hours from Vientiane. He returned to China on January 31, where he was found to be infected. In response, Lao authorities retraced his steps, tested people who had come into contact with him and took aggressive measures to prevent further infection. Laos suspended issuance of visas to Chinese nationals, and Lao Airlines reducedits flights to China (not only is China the main market for Lao Airlines, but the tourism trade in Laos is also almost entirely dependent on China). There was no confirmation case from COVID-19 in Laos until almost two months later, March 24.
On March 5, the Deputy Minister of Health of Laos, Dr Phouthone Muongpak, held a press conference where he said that there had been 53 suspected cases of COVID-19 in the country, but that each of the patients had tested negative. “We are confident in our monitoring system”, mentioned Dr Phouttone, deputy head of the Laos task force committee for the prevention and control of COVID-19. Teams of epidemiologists have traveled to locations in Laos where deaths believed to be due to COVID-19 have been reported; samples taken from the bodies were tested at three laboratories: the National Laboratory and Epidemiology Center (which had WHO experts supervising the test), the Pasteur Institute in Laos, and the Microbiology Laboratory of the Mahosot Hospital. They all came back negative. Additionally, samples were also sent to the WHO lab in Australia and came back negative, mentioned Dr Rattanaxay Phetsouvanh, Director General of the Department of Communicable Disease Control of Laos.
Vientiane time credited the lack of cases in Laos to the rigorous scans and tests carried out at entry points and the quarantines imposed on those who have entered the country. Even those who showed no symptoms when they entered Laos have been asked to self-quarantine for two weeks. Showing great caution, on March 9, the government declared that the Lao New Year celebrations (April 13-15) would be cancelled.
In fact, there were no cases in Laos from January 30 to March 24, when the first two confirmed case were reported: They were a 28-year-old male hotel worker in Vientiane who most likely contracted the virus while on a work trip to Bangkok, Thailand in early March, and a guide 36-year-old tourist from Vientiane who most likely contracted it from a tourist (as a government official told me). The two patients were taken to the “150-bed” Mittaphab Friendship Hospital in Vientiane, which was soon to be designated as a COVID-19 hospital.
Five days later, on March 29, the Lao government announcement complete containment of the country. Any necessary activity should follow strict WHO protocols for physical distancing, mask-wearing and hand-washing. The task force was tasked with training health and security professionals, developing plans to break the chain of infection (including testing, contact tracing, quarantine and treatment) and to use the public sector to procure the necessary medical equipment (including protective equipment and ventilators). Government agencies have been ordered to “provide details[ed] orientation” in an easy-to-understand format through the various government media and through a website; only scientific information should be transmitted to the public.
On July 8, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research published a report titled “CoronaShock and Socialism”. The text takes a close look at the experience of four parts of the world with socialist governments – Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam and Kerala, India – and how these parts of the world were able to significantly break the chain of infection. The analysis showed that these countries were better able to deal with the virus because they had taken a science-based approach, had a public sector they could rely on to produce the materials they they needed to fight the virus and they action. Laos has followed these principles very well, as two officials from the Ministry of Health informed me by telephone in early July. In addition, Laos received basic necessities (protective suits, masks) from the two Vietnamand China (Chinese medical personnel also came to assist the Lao medical service).
In June, Prime Minister Thongloun mentioned that – for now – Laos seems to have fended off the virus. Dr Howard Sobel, the WHO representative in Laos, agreed. The Laos government’s response, Dr Sobel said, “has been exemplary. The government anticipated the arrival of this terrible disease and did everything to stop its spread. Doubts about the low number of cases and the absence of deaths were dismissed by Ludovic Arnout of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “It’s hard to hide [coronavirus cases]he said, “so I believe it.
Impact
Laos has not fully recovered from the impact of American bombing on the country: 2.5 million tons of American bombs dropped on Laos between 1964 and 1973, with the ground in many parts of the country polluted for generations. When US President Barack Obama visited Laos in 2016, he regretted the “biggest bombing in history”, but he did not apologize for it. He pledged $90 million over three years to remove an estimated 75 million unexploded bombs that Continue of causing casualties and harming agriculture decades after the end of the “Secret War”.
Nevertheless, the communist government of Laos, with investments from China, persisted in a development path that brought gains to its people. Basic human indicators have improvedand over the past two decades unemployment has remained below 1%.
But the coronavirus recession will hit Laos very hard. In April, Anousone Khamsingsavath, Director General of the Department of Vocational Skills Development at the Ministry of Labor and Welfare, mentioned, “Poverty in Laos will be exacerbated because a large number of people have been laid off from their jobs.” His ministry “recently reported that the unemployment rate had risen from the average 2% to 25% currently”, according to the Vientiane time. The World Bank Noted that while Laos has “so far avoided a health crisis”, it has not been “immune to the global economic slowdown”. Growth rates, which had been estimated before the pandemic as safe at 7%, collapse to near zero due to the global coronavirus recession.
Most terrifyingly, this will mean that Laos, which had a relatively stable economy, will descend into debt and chaos. In May, Fitch Ratings downgraded Laos’ long-term default rating for foreign currency issuers to B- and revised its overall outlook from “stable” to “negative”. This change in the economy of Laos is mainly due to the effects of the coronavirus on the global economy. Laos is expected to service around $900 million in debt service in 2020, an amount it simply cannot afford to pay (its foreign exchange reserves are only $1 billion).
“We have overcome the virus crisis,” a government official told me. “Now we are going to be defeated by the debt crisis, which we did not create.”
This article was produced by Globetrottera project of the Independent Media Institute.
