EVEN as they struggle with one of the world’s worst COVID-19 outbreaks, nations across Southeast Asia are slowly realizing that they can no longer afford the economy-crippling restrictions needed to squash it.

On the factory floors of Vietnam and Malaysia, in the barbershops of Manila or office towers of Singapore, regulators are pushing forward with plans to reopen, seeking to balance containing the virus with keeping people and money moving.

That’s leading to a range of experiments including military-delivered food, sequestered workers, micro-lockdowns and vaccinated-only access to restaurants and offices.

In contrast to Europe and the United States, which have already moved down the reopening path, the region’s low vaccination rates leave it among the world’s most vulnerable to the Delta variant.

But with state finances stretched by previous rounds of stimulus and dwindling monetary policy firepower, lockdowns are becoming less tenable by the day.

“It’s a tricky balance between lives and livelihoods,” said Krystal Tan, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group economist, noting that even Singapore has struggled with infection spikes despite having a world-leading vaccination rate. The risks of stop-start re-openings are higher in the rest of the region, where coverage is considerably lower, Tan said.

Southeast Asia’s factory shutdowns have rippled across the world to create supply chain hiccups, with automakers including Toyota Motor Corp. slashing production and clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. warning the situation is “out of control.”

The daily death rate in many Southeast Asian countries has surpassed the global average. Yet officials are increasingly worried about what it means economically if restrictions linger too long despite slow inoculations.

Malaysia cut its 2021 growth forecast in half to 3-4 percent as daily cases hit records. Thailand’s hoped-for rebound on a critical tourism revival is swiftly vanishing.

Even where the outlook appears impressive — Vietnam is set to grow 6 percent this year and Singapore officials see theirs as high as 7 percent — there’s increasing pressure to address global supply-chain blockages and to avoid dampening foreign investor appetite for the dynamic region.

According to Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. economist Wellian Wiranto, Southeast Asian nations are being worn down both by the economic costs from successive rounds of lockdowns and an increasing sense of exhaustion among their populations as the crisis drags on.

“Any hope of a broad border reopening that can facilitate trade and tourism flow across various ASEAN countries is going to remain a distant pipe dream,” Wiranto said. (SD-Agencies)