How Brunei Beat COVID-19

The small Southeast Asian sultanate is one of the few countries to avoid a massive surge in cases and deaths.

Brunei rarely registers on journalists’ radar. Surrounded on three sides by Malaysia and dwarfed by maritime neighbors such as Indonesia and the Philippines, the oil-rich sultanate has plenty of competition for the news media’s attention in Southeast Asia and the international community as a whole. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ most obscure member state has one claim to fame, however: through an aggressive strategy of proactive measures, Brunei has succeeded in containing the coronavirus where many of its better-known Western counterparts have failed.
Just a few weeks earlier on March 9, Bolkiah had expressed his thanks that the coronavirus had yet to reach Brunei, demonstrating how much had changed in the interim.
The sultanate’s earliest steps might have dealt the most damage to economic growth in the long term. China provided Brunei 65,000 tourists in 2018, more than any other country. The sultanate’s limitations on travel from China will likely jeopardize these tourism ties.
In the early days of the pandemic, Chinese officials criticized other countries for imposing travel bans, suggesting that Chinese diplomats will remember Brunei’s slight.

This article was written by Austin Bodetti

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