The Pandemic Impact on Food Security
By: Antoine Blodgett
Tags: Security, Food, Covid 19, Health, Healthcare

The Pandemic Impact on Food Security

Covid 19 has affected food and health worldwide.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to serious consequences for health, especially the economy and food security in South-East Asia and Americas. For the most part, South-East Asia has largely avoided the uncontrolled infection rates seen in much of the rest of the world, thanks to government action prioritizing public health policies over the demands of the economy. That was especially evident in Vietnam where there have been just over 1,000 Covid-19 cases, despite early contact with the disease. Indonesia and the Philippines, however, have been especially badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, largely due to early mismanagement in both countries.

Photo by Jakub Kapusnak on Unsplash

Though most countries in the region have escaped the worst health impacts of the disease, this has led to economic troubles for many. The Philippines is predicted to contract the most sharply in 2020, after early failures in controlling the virus led to a series of strict lockdown measures, which subsequently depressed consumption and reduced the flow of remittances.

Thailand has also experienced a sharp economic contraction, which has contributed to ongoing protests in the kingdom. Only Vietnam appears to be weathering the economic consequences of the pandemic, in large part due to successful early measures to limit the spread of the virus, which allowed the country to re-open quickly.

Food security has declined so much around the world in 2020, in no small part because of the Covid-19 pandemic and related lockdown measures being implemented. In South-East Asia, the pandemic has exacerbated several existing food security risks.

Despite major improvements due to the measures being implemented by the government, there are major challenges to food security across the region. Poverty rates remain high, exceeding 40 percent in some countries, and roughly 60 million are undernourished. Even in countries where undernourishment has declined the most, such as Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, levels of undernourishment remain alarmingly high.

Covid-19: The South-East Asian Experience

As a writer from Singapore, I understand the sentiment above the effects of the pandemic. Covid-19 pandemic arrived in South-East Asia sooner than in many other parts of the world. The region has only recently seen major spikes in the disease, however, most notably in Indonesia and the Philippines. Both countries have struggled to contain the virus — in Indonesia, there have been around half a million cases, while in the Philippines cases have risen to over 400,000. The explosion in cases has been largely due to poor governance and pandemic management.

Unfortunately in Indonesia, members of Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s cabinet have touted remedies with no basis in science such as herbal juices and eucalyptus necklaces. By the end of August, Indonesia had one of the lowest rates of testing in the world and of those who were tested, 17 percent tested positive (according to the World Health Organization (WHO), a positive rate of more than five percent indicates an uncontrolled outbreak). This explains the increase in cases in the South East Asia region.

Most South-East Asian countries have managed to avoid the massive spikes seen across much of the world. Vietnam, which has a population roughly similar to that of the Philippines, has kept cases low, at around 1,200, despite poorer public health infrastructure than many of its neighbors. At the start of the pandemic, Vietnam was quick to react, developing testing kits, strategically testing its population, and aggressively contact tracing. The country closed its borders with China as soon as the first death was announced in Wuhan and pandemic preparations began a full month before the WHO announced a pandemic. As cases rose early in the pandemic, Vietnam hospitalized every infected person and traced their contacts to the fourth degree, requiring those contacts to isolate as the army sanitized neighborhoods.

Other parts of South-East Asia have also succeeded in containing the virus, to varying degrees. Despite being the first country outside of China to record a case of Covid-19, and early missteps in its pandemic response and high population density, Thailand has also managed to keep infection rates low (at just under 4,000 cases as of 25th November 2020) which such is seen to be commendable.

With food more difficult to access because of the national based lockdown, nutritional health is expected to worsen, adding to the 61 million in the region who are already undernourished and micronutrient deficiencies are already a persistent threat. While there has so far been little research into the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on nutrition in the region, it seems likely that reduced food access will lead to worsening nutrition in the region.

Across South-East Asia, around 25 percent of children under the age of five are stunted (stunting describes a low height for the age of the child, which can lead to other health and neurological complications), and 8.7% experience wasting (low weight for height). Adults are also at risk of poor nutrition, with over a quarter of women in the region suffering from iron deficiency anemia. Lockdown measures such as school closures have prompted particular concern, as many schools provide free or subsidized meals to children from low-income families, providing vital nutrition that they otherwise do not receive.

Similarly, potential disruptions to supply chains have caused concerns that access to nutrient-rich but perishable foods could also worsen, putting vulnerable groups at risk of nutritional deficiencies. Several Indonesian provinces saw deficits in staple foods due to such disruptions.

With this in mind, we need to be prepared to accept in the long term that food and nutritional security will be affected, and to reduce the impact what we as citizens can do is try to stockpiling necessary food but of course not until the extent it creates a frenzy like a toilet paper panic 3 or 4 months back.