“The pandemic has highlighted deep inequalities, shortfalls in governance and the imperative for a sustainable development pathway. And it has revealed new challenges, including to peace and security,” Guterres said in a statement last week, suggesting that the region had much work to do.

The secretary general published a policy brief on Wednesday highlighting the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on vulnerable groups and the danger that many would be pushed back into poverty and unemployment.

Some countries remain unable to address COVID-19 sufficiently. More than half of the countries in Southeast Asia are vulnerable because of weak health systems, according to the report.

“The World Health Organization’s universal health coverage index of service coverage reported a median index of 61 out of 100, suggesting that much more progress is needed,” the report read.

However, the region has reported significantly fewer confirmed COVID-19 cases and related deaths than most other global regions with some variation among countries. The report noted that regional cooperation had been “robust”.

UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) executive secretary Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana told reporters in a teleconference that while four or five countries in the region were “quite okay” in their COVID-19 preparedness, health expenditures for some countries were “too low compared to the level that is required”.

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