Covid-19 in Asia

Abstract Covid-19 in Asia: Law and Policy Contexts is an edited collection of original essays on Asia’s legal and policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, which, in a matter of months, swept around the globe, infecting millions. In a matter of weeks, the unimaginable became ordinary: lockdowns of cities and entire countries, physical distancing and quarantines, travel restrictions and border controls, movement-tracking technology, mandatory closures of all but essential services, economic devastation and mass unemployment, and government assistance programs on record-breaking scales. Yet a pandemic on this scale, under contemporary conditions of globalization, has left governments and their advisors scrambling to improvise solutions, often themselves unprecedented in modern times, such as the initial lockdown of Wuhan. Identifying cross-cutting themes and challenges, this collection of essays taps the collective knowledge of an interdisciplinary team of sixty-one researchers. Beginning with an epidemiological overview and survey of the law and policy themes, it covers five topics: first wave containment measures; emergency powers; technology, science, and expertise; politics, religion, and governance; and economy, climate, and sustainability.