Impact of COVID-19 on Economic Activities and Poverty Threats in the Asia-Pacific Region

This paper discusses the impact caused by a virus outbreak called coronavirus disease (COVID-19). The virus initially appeared in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, then spread throughout the world, including the Asia-Pacific Region (APR). COVID-19 is believed to have damaged health and the global economy. Unlike the crisis that was caused by many previous disruptions, the impact caused by COVID-19 is wider and bigger. Many economic sectors have been paralyzed and suffered losses, such as production and trade. Export-import cooperation has become a dependency between countries, and this has also been hampered due to the rapid spread of this pandemic. Then, the closure of transportation access and the suggestion to stay at home has made the tourism sector sluggish. Meanwhile, another effect of this pandemic is the emergence of new poor groups due to the rise in layoffs. This study uses qualitative research methods to search for theoretical references relevant to cases or problems found in various works of literature, mainly scientific journals, books, reports, and actual and trusted news on the internet. This study aims to explore the potential of COVID-19 that not only threatens health, but also social, political, and economic spheres. From the analysis, it was concluded that COVID-19 could inhibit all global socioeconomic activities that threaten the success of realizing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but on the other hand, this pandemic can also be momentum for a more sustainable life order.


Introduction
In late 2019, world media highlighted the emergence of a virus outbreak that infected Wuhan, China. Initially, the virus known as COVID-19 had only infected tens of thousands of Chinese citizens; slowly but surely, the virus finally came out of its habitat to spread to neighbouring countries such as South Korea, Japan, and surrounding areas. The situation worsened in early 2020 when a virus outbreak began to spread with further reach to almost all countries in the world, such as Iran, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Russia, the United States, and others. The most recent data obtained on May 17, 2020, shows there have been 4.7 million cases with a mortality rate of 15%.
The United States is the largest country infected with coronavirus with almost one-third of the total world cases (worldometers.info, accessed May 17, 2020).
Because of its rapid spread, the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that the current crisis is an international health emergency (Sohrabi et al., 2020); therefore, governments around the world are expected to be able to work to address the spread of this pandemic through a series of local policies, especially Non-Pharmaceutical Intervention (NPI) such as quarantine, border closure, intensive medical research, and provision of social protection.
Even so, the commotion of the world community caused by the spread of a deadly virus has happened before. "The global community has experienced many health crises in the past 20 years caused by a series of new viral infections, namely HIV, Influenza A H1N1 virus subtypes, Influenza A H5N1 virus subtypes, SARS-CoV1, MERS-CoV, and Ebola. However, epidemiological novelty caused by a coronavirus (SARS-CoV2), reveals our lack of readiness to deal with its rapid and sudden spread, that is why many governments in the world do not have enough time to deal with it" (Djalante et al., 2020). Experience has shown that several countries have overcome global health crises, but the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic is believed to be greater than the previous crises due to its global scale and widespread closure of business, travel, and restrictions on activities outside the home (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020). Furthermore, Li et al. (2020) also shared the idea that this virus has a fast spread rate compared to other similar viruses. Therefore, this is a very shocking blow to the governments in the world, because this virus comes suddenly and is difficult to control.
Not only health, but coronavirus has also been able to paralyze various state activities, as stated by Karabag (2020) that this virus has caused a crisis that generates various political and Muhammad Achdan Tharis is a student of international relations at Almuslim University, Bireun.
He is an excellent student who actively participates in a number of competitions and youth association activities at regional and national levels.
economic turmoil, from regional to global impact. Moreover, Carlsson-Szlezak et al. (2020) stated that the virus eventually kills production and deactivates important components of the supply chain, stopping production, then causing furloughs and even layoffs as the worst condition. As a consequence, many people have lost their source of income, which ultimately plunges those person into a cycle of poverty (Renahy et al., 2018 One of the main problems in the global economy faced by the APR is that China, which is a major supplier of various commodities for several countries, has been preoccupied with restoring the condition of its own country. The subject of the discussion will be divided into three parts. First, the economic potential in APRIL 2, the impact of the coronavirus pandemic spread on economic activities and employment. And the third is the emergence of the potential for poverty.

Method
In this scientific paper, the authors use qualitative research methods with an emphasis on secondary data through searching for relevant reference sources with problems that can be found in general in various types of literature, such as scientific journals, books, reports, actual news on the internet, and so on.
The theoretical references obtained through the study of the literature serve as the basic foundation and main analytical tool in research practice in this scientific article. Therefore, researchers used Atlas.ti software to help the data analysis process to make it more efficient and structured. The data collected in the Atlas.
ti software has a special study feature related to the object of this research. pandemic, which is currently sweeping the world, including in the Asia Pacific region.
However, the emergency policy that the authors offer is still with a good assessment and is in accordance with the local wisdom of countries in the Asia Pacific region. The goal is that this policy can be implemented and sustainable as it should be in accordance with the target of achieving the SDGs program, which will be realized in 2030, especially after COVID-19 has passed, leaving humankind to live as before.

Results and Discussion
To analyze the problem in this study, the authors have used the emergency management (EM) theory. Hoetmer (1991)  includes dealing with a vulnerability that is related to poverty and results in an inability to prevent, prepare for, or recover from a disaster.
Thus, it can be said that EM has traditionally been a reactive profession, neglecting mitigation and recovery and spending much of its time addressing preparedness measures for emergency response.

Economic Potential in the Asia-Pacific Region
The Asia-Pacific region (APR) is one of the regions that has a significant influence on the sustainability of the world economy. Lai (2013) explains that the Asia-Pacific region is one of the main destinations for foreign investment, trade, manufacturing and other business operations.

Furthermore, the cooperation of countries in
Asia-Pacific has now become an important factor in economic development at the modern stage of the world economy (Kuznetsova, 2016); in this region are countries with the largest economic growth in the world, namely China (Lin, 2011).
With this status of excellence, it is not surprising that the APR receives more attention from world economic actors.
Geographically, the APR itself is a region that is inhabited by as many as 47 countries,   (Carvalho, 2020). From this experience, it can be said that COVID-19 will weaken the world economy even more (Carlsson-Szlezak et al., 2020;Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020;Karabag, 2020). Furthermore, according to the report from OECD (2020), world economic growth, which has weakened since 2019, will be weaker, from 2.9% to 2.4%. So, Hyundai (South Korea), which lacked spare parts from China (BBC, 2020). Delay in sending and receiving raw materials will affect exportsimports of countries in the world so that in the end, this might threaten the country's foreign exchange obtained through these activities.
Therefore, many countries that depend on the import of raw materials with China will experience a decline in exports because the amount produced will not be as usual.
When the plague strikes, the tourism sector is certainly to be paralyzed because many people will refrain from travelling. This worse situation is not surprising, considering that travel and tourism play an important role in carrying disease and disease vectors (Browne et al., 2016). The same thing was also explained by Gössling, Scott and Hall (2020) who thought tourism was about movement, and transportation acted as a vector for distribution of pathogens on a regional and global scale that also supported the pandemic indirectly.   (Davies, 2020;Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020;Mair, 2020). Furthermore, many things will change for the better, such as economic development, including tourism, which will become more sustainable (Gössling, Scott and Hall, 2020;Kozul-Wright & Barbosa, 2020). Simply stated, sustainable tourism is seen as a normative orientation that seeks to steer community systems and behaviour on a broad and integrated path towards sustainable development (Bramwell et al., 2017). Even though sustainable tourism is not a new discourse because this pathway has been discussed since three decades ago (Mihalic, 2016;Bramwell et al., 2017;Higgins-Desbiolles, 2018), it seems that COVID-19 is the momentum to generate this old intention.

Threat of Poverty
Besides being known as a region that has rapid economic growth, the Asia-Pacific Region Bank estimates that COVID-19 is likely to cause the first increase in global poverty since 1998.
Using the latest data, it is estimated that the coronavirus will push 40-60 million people into extreme poverty (Mahler and Lakner, 2020).
With conditions of poverty that continue to increase and the absence of employment opportunities on the rise, another bigger problem is hunger. Poverty and hunger are closely related because hunger is both a cause and consequence of poverty (Sharma, Dwivedi and Singh, 2016;Saxena, 2018). Meanwhile, starvation, if not handled properly, can lead to more serious problems, namely crime.
Previous studies have observed that poverty and crime go hand in hand. Iyer and Topalova (2014) stated that absolute poverty is associated with higher crime rates compared to relative poverty. Meanwhile, income shocks that cause widespread poverty were the main cause of crime (Papaioannou, 2017 and so on. The same thing was also expressed by Campbell (2020). During this crisis period, many people were ready and willing to support community initiatives even though they were in their anxiety. Millions of households were inevitably in poverty before the pandemic, and millions more have the potential to be unless the government continues to protect household income through policy changes (Power et al., 2020). Therefore, for short-term solutions, the existence of the voluntary community is very helpful to the community, but the charitable activities they build are not suitable for longterm solutions. That way, the government must be present for the community, even though late in determining the direction of its policy.
Long before COVID-19 attacked, the government had directed its policy on social protection as an instrument in eradicating poverty. According to Hidrobo et al. (2018), in the past 20 years, social protection has emerged as an additional policy tool to overcome poverty and hunger in developing countries. Harris (2013), as an effective social protection system has long been seen as a luxury that is difficult to reach by many developing and low-income countries. Therefore, a sustainable source of funding is needed, outside of state revenues, foreign loans or debt.
As explained in the previous section, nearly three-quarters of the world's Muslim population lives in Asia-Pacific. Luckily for a Muslim-majority country, there is a long tradition of providing social welfare to underprivileged people through a collection of Zakat, which is a religious obligation for all Muslims who have wealth on the verge of a minimum limit to help those in need. Zakat has a role in providing social protection by protecting people who are vulnerable to risk (Ibrahim and Ghazali, 2014;Hassanain and Saaid, 2016). The strength of Zakat funding sources is very strong. Shaikh (2016) found that the ratio of Zakat to GDP in some countries has exceeded the Poverty Gap Index to GDP (PGI-GDP) and the Poverty HeadCount Ratio to GDP (PHCR-GDP).
Therefore, based on its objectives and benefits, Zakat, which is believed to have a sustainable source of funds, seems to be an alternative source of funding for social protection (Rassanjani, 2018).

This is also in line with what was conveyed by
Ariyani (2016)  Furthermore, the emergence of vulnerability due to the pandemic is closely related to poverty, which leaves the country unable to prevent, prepare for, or recover from disasters.
Therefore, improving wealth distribution and providing insurance needs to be considered by the government to minimize losses and to increase resilience due to COVID-19, but it is difficult to predict when it will end.

Conclusion
The coronavirus pandemic is very fierce, and there are no signs that the spread of this pandemic can be stopped quickly, so it is necessary to set an effective strategy to prevent the spread of this pandemic to avoid an economic recession.
The rapid spread of COVID-19 makes the whole world vigorously concentrate its attention to producing non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) policies, such as regional quarantine, and also to call on people to refrain from travelling outside the house or carrying out activities as usual outside the house, and many more. However, the policy at once has hampered many economic activities in the tourism, financial and other sectors. The overcome the impasse of those who need to get through the crisis, we will never reach the SDGs for all, so these marginalized groups will grow throughout the world. In doing so, it is necessary to promote Goal 17 Partnership for the Goals to facilitate increased progress of the SDGs for countries that are fighting the pandemic. In the end, we need to fight together to revive the SDGs for countries that need help.
Last but not least, the government must make emergency policies amid the unpreparedness of many countries in dealing with this non-natural disaster. The health emergency and the threat of poverty that was being faced during the COVID-19 forced the governments of countries in the Asia Pacific region to find new sources for revenues by providing social protection for their citizens.
In the next few months, there will be many "emergency management" made by the governments of Asia Pacific countries to respond to the social and political problems.