COVID-19 pandemic in Southeast Asia

It was confirmed to have spread to Southeast Asia on 13 January 2020, when a 61-year-old woman from Wuhan tested positive in Thailand, making it the first country other than China to report a case.

On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan, Hubei, China, which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.

Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Malaysia reported the index cases in January 2020, while the rest were in March.

The second rise in infections began in early June amidst of the surge of the Delta variant, and peaked from July to August when the region averaged almost 100,000 cases and 3,000 deaths daily.

The third wave hit Southeast Asia in February 2022 as it reported more than 200,000 cases daily due to the spread of the Omicron variant.

It started when eight Chinese nationals were quarantined at a hotel in Johor Bahru on 24 January after coming into contact with an infected person in neighbouring Singapore.

[13] Despite early reports of them tested negative for the virus,[14] three of them were confirmed to be infected on 25 January and subsequently quarantined at the Sungai Buloh Hospital in Selangor.

[17] On 23 January 2020, it was confirmed that the pandemic had spread to Vietnam, when a 66-year-old Chinese man travelling from epicenter Wuhan to Hanoi to visit his son tested positive.