Moody’s Analytics says Cambodia’s rate of vaccination against COVID-19 is at least twice the levels in other ASEAN countries with the exception of Singapore.
In an outlook released Friday, the affiliate of U.S. credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service said the Asia-Pacific economy was “increasingly defined by those countries that are controlling COVID-19 and rolling out vaccines quickly, and those that are not.”
The outlook includes a chart showing that shots administered in Cambodia had reached more than 45 percent of its adult population as of Thursday last week.
Vaccination rates were around 20 percent in Laos and Malaysia and around 15 percent or less in Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
A separate chart showed that Singapore had administered shots to around 90 percent of its adult population as of Thursday last week while the rate for China was more than 70 percent. Hong Kong was about the same rate as Cambodia.
The outlook said Singapore could achieve herd resilience — defined as 65 percent of the population above 12 years old fully vaccinated — in the third quarter.
“Hong Kong could follow at the end of the year or early in 2022,” it said. “Elsewhere there are clear accelerations of vaccine programmes, perhaps no more so than in China.”
But “vaccination rates remain very low in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam,” the outlook said.
“The laggards in controlling COVID-19 face the risk of an extended slow recovery of their domestic economies.”
Moody’s Analytics also noted delayed recoveries in domestic spending across the Asia-Pacific region.
“Southeast Asia has been hit the hardest,” it said. “The number of new cases is high in Indonesia and the Philippines and has surged in Thailand and, to a lesser degree, Vietnam.
“Even Singapore, the region’s leader in vaccinations, is struggling to contain small clusters of the virus.”
Source: Agency Kampuchea Press