The Covid-19 outbreak, sowing panic across the globe and leading the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a global health emergency is impacting Chinese, Asian and global economies as questions are emerging of how long might a full recovery take.

Also under scrutiny are government's capacity to handle a public health emergency — a sentiment echoed across Southeast Asia.

The viral outbreak that began in China has infected more than 73,000 people globally as of early this week.

The latest figures reported by each government''s health authority as of last Tuesday in Beijing: — Mainland China: 1,868 deaths among 72,436 cases, mostly in the central province of Hubei — Hong Kong: 58 cases, 1 death — Macao: 10 — Japan: 610 cases, including 542 from a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, 1 death — Singapore: 77 cases — Thailand: 35 — South Korea: 31 — Malaysia: 22 — Taiwan: 22 cases, 1 death — Vietnam: 16 cases — Germany: 16 — United States: 15 cases; separately, 1 U.S. citizen died in China — Australia: 14 cases — France: 12 cases, 1 death — United Kingdom: 9 cases — United Arab Emirates: 9 — Canada: 8 — Philippines: 3 cases, 1 death — India: 3 cases — Italy: 3 — Russia: 2 — Spain: 2 — Belgium: 1 — Nepal: 1 — Sri Lanka: 1 — Sweden: 1 — Cambodia: 1 — Finland: 1 — Egypt: 1.

The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Policy Support Unit (PSU) in a statement said the current sentiments of consumers and investors amid the virus outbreak could translate into “significant economic and financial risks” in the Asia Pacific.

“There is already an observed decline in travel and tourism. An associated adverse impact on retail and hospitality receipts as well as transport sales are expected to reverberate around the world,” it said.

The airline industry is already bracing for loses of up to US$5 billion this year, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) said last week. It said 70 airlines had cancelled all international flights in and out of China and 50 others had reduced operations since the virus first emerged.

The tourism-dependent economies of Southeast Asia are particularly vulnerable. China’s rapidly swelling middle class sparked a boom in tourist visits abroad, which soared from 20 million in 2003 to 150 million in 2018.

Besides Thailand’s, it is the tourism industries of Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan that are most exposed to the Chinese travel market.

“If this lasts for three to six months, it will be catastrophic for the tourism industry,” says Stuart McDonald, founder of the TravelFish independent travel guide to Southeast Asia.

Against this backdrop, the concern is acute in Southeast Asia, where many economies are heavily interconnected with the world's second largest economy. Export and import activity and tourism are the areas being hit the hardest.

For example, Hyundai had to suspend production for several days this month at its Ulsan complex in South Korea, which has an annual capacity of 1.4 million vehicles, because it had run out of parts made by suppliers in Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak. Nissan had to close a plant in Japan for two days for the same reason.

Some factories in China that normally would have reopened on Feb 3 after the week-long Lunar New Year holiday remained closed to ensure the safety of workers, and are only expected to resume production this week.

Agriculture is another sector facing trouble because of drought conditions.

Indian companies have begun to feel the heat with disruption in the supply-demand scenario, according to LocalCircles, community-based social media platform.

According to the survey report from LocalCircles, 19 percent of Indian entities said they were facing supply disruption. At the same time, 26 percent of Indian entities said to be noticing weak demand following the COVID-19 outbreak in China. Top Indian imports from China include electronic equipment, machinery, organic chemicals, fertilizers, vehicle components, telecom equipment and mobile phones.

With the coronavirus looking likely to become a pandemic, a spotlight has been cast on the ability of Asian countries to respond. The vastly different levels of health care in the region raise questions about the capacity of some countries to catch up with — and stem — the deadly virus.

For a region whose warmer climate renders it prone to diseases originating from animals, Southeast Asia is ill-prepared to mount an emergency response to viral infectious diseases. Researchers at the health security company Metabiota found a "systematic underfinancing" leading to a concentration of weakly prepared health systems in the region.

"When ministries make allocative decisions, they're trying to balance between present tense needs, especially in Asia where pockets of poverty are acute, and the need to protect against future threats," said Ben Oppenheim, senior director of product at Metabiota. "The tendency is for the future tense not to be prioritized, but the cost is significant in terms of lives and economic loss."

Because of Asia's growing share of the global economy, the International Monetary Fund has warned that the novel coronavirus's economic repercussions will be worse than the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s.

World Health Organization guidelines recommend that countries build up disease surveillance, diagnostics and response capacities. Laboratories in the Philippines had to wait for coronavirus test reagents to arrive from Japan, according to health department spokesman Eric Domingo.

With no cases so far confirmed in Indonesia, the public is questioning the capability of health officials to screen and detect infections.

Ascobat Gani, a University of Indonesia professor in public health, said the country has the regulatory framework to deal with the outbreak, but "the problem is the execution." He pointed out that there were not enough surveillance officers, epidemiologists and sanitarians to properly monitor and handle an epidemic in the archipelago nation of 270 million people.

Similar concerns exist in Cambodia, where Prime Minister Hun Sen declared the country coronavirus "free" after its one confirmed patient — a Chinese man on vacation — recovered. Some 3,000 Chinese from Wuhan visited Sihanoukville and Siem Reap during the Lunar New Year.

Governments in Asia have faced criticism for their handling of the outbreak. Some have been accused of overreaction, others of underreaction.

Australia sequestered evacuees and travellers from China on Christmas Island, and more than 50 countries have imposed travel restrictions on people coming from China. Japan, on the other hand, allowed two evacuees from the virus epicentre of Wuhan to return home without undergoing the recommended 14-day quarantine.

Meanwhile, health professionals from around the world are continuing their efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19, while researchers try to come up with treatments that could still be months away.

Dr Daniel Kertesz, the WHO representative in Thailand, told a recent conference that the priority for member states right now is "limiting human-to-human transmission".

The work includes identifying cases, isolating them so that they will not infect others, and tracing their contacts. "The second thing is really about addressing the crucial unknowns," he added.

"Our experience is that they (travel bans) are not particularly effective," he said, adding that a travel ban merely contributes to deferring the expansion of the infection.

— Agencies