Covid-19: International Responses and Strategies. A Comparative Study of Japan, Sweden, Brazil, and Vietnam

Abstract

Humankind has been haunted and tormented by diseases that have taken a toll on hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. Deadly diseases like plague, tuberculosis, smallpox, and many others of the kind have claimed many human lives over the centuries. Nonetheless, in this era of globalization, a disease spread by a virus has taken the world by storm as a pandemic. The different waves of the pandemic have brought the world to its knees as a novel coronavirus called the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been found responsible for Covid-19. The virus changed the lives of millions across the globe as it spread to many countries by late 2019 and early 2020. The countries adopted several steps to control and contain the spread of the virus with the limited knowledge they had of the disease. The prime mode of transmission of the virus was understood to be through touch and not by air at the time (though it has now been proved to be an airborne infection). As the virus continued to mark its presence in most of the world by March 2020, most countries resorted to immediate non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as closing down national borders, lockdowns, self-restraint, social distancing, sanitization, and so on that were implemented at various stages depending on the gravity and intensity of the spread of the virus and the demographics of the countries. The stage, process and effectiveness of implementation for all the countries depended on the structure of its political administration and the power vested in the respective authorities.
To understand how the effects of the pandemic differs to various regions of the world depending on the kind of governmental structure, culture, demographics, peoples’ responses, and infrastructure, the paper explores and analyses the responses, strategies, and policies by the countries of specific regions. Japan from Northeast Asia, Vietnam from Southeast Asia, Sweden from Scandinavia, and Brazil from Latin America, are analysed with the available resources to understand why they stand as an exception in their respective regions.