When the coronavirus initially swept across the East — first China, then Thailand, Japan, and South Korea — the Western countries watched on cautiously from the other side of the globe.

Key points: Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan drew international praise for their response

Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan drew international praise for their response Hong Kong and Singapore are now bracing for what some scientists fear is the second wave

Hong Kong and Singapore are now bracing for what some scientists fear is the second wave A country's response is shaped by cultural factors and recent experience

Many of them would not have anticipated how severely they would be hit, as the death toll rocketed past 100,000 in Europe and 46,000 in the United States this week.

The US, Italy, Spain, France and the United Kingdom have now all overtaken China with some of the highest numbers of reported cases and deaths around the world.

However, many remain sceptical about the accuracy of China's official death toll, and that doubt was reinforced when Wuhan revised its total deaths up by about 50 per cent to 3,869 last week.

Other than China, no other Asian countries feature in the list of top 15 countries with the most confirmed cases, while Western countries dominate, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

The US has also become the new global epicentre of the pandemic, accounting for a quarter of the global coronavirus-related fatalities.

Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan were among the first to be hit, drawing international praise for their response to the crisis.

But despite their early success, Singapore and Japan are now bracing for what some scientists fear is the second wave after a resurgence of cases.

Here we take a look at how the East has managed the outbreak compared to the West, and why the latter struggled to get a head start.

The West coming to terms with a crisis they didn't expect

Across the United States, protesters have been taking to the streets in protest of lockdown orders. ( AP: Rick Bowmer )

Health experts say the way in which a country and its population respond to a pandemic is shaped by cultural factors, its form of government and recent experience.

China, Taiwan and Singapore have all experienced SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in 2003, while South Korea learned lessons from the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak in 2015.

Gary Slutkin, an American epidemiologist and former World Health Organisation official, told the ABC those experiences were "very instructive" for the Asian countries and meant they were prepared to respond to a serious respiratory pathogen.

In comparison, he said even though the US also had cases of Ebola and SARS on its shores, it had not experienced a serious epidemic in recent history.

"The US is used to seeing horrible things happen elsewhere that don't affect it, whether it's war, or outbreaks," Dr Slutkin said.

"[People are] watching television, and they're seeing horrendous things from Haiti, of hurricanes … horrendous things from Democratic Republic of Congo, of Ebola, but it's just a television show, and it isn't something that really affects the average American.

"So I think it's the normal human ability to deny and also America's distance, both physical and social, and the way it perceives itself as being better and above these problems."

Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia in England, told the ABC it was only after the Italy outbreak that many Western health agencies really started considering that COVID-19 was a real concern.

"But by then, effectively, I think it was a bit late, to be honest," he told the ABC.

"And so things like getting in and increasing your stocks of PPE [personal protective equipment] … and building up capacity to do the tests was sort of not done at a time when it would have actually make a big difference, sadly."

A damning New York Times report from earlier this month revealed US President Donald Trump had also squandered valuable time in the early months of the outbreak by repeatedly downplaying the severity of the virus as several government officials sounded the alarm.

After the US confirmed its first case on January 20, it would be almost two months before Mr Trump agreed to recommend social distancing rules.

In comparison, Ooi Eng Eong, a professor in emerging infectious diseases at the National University of Singapore, said the containment measures kicked in even as soon as the first case was detected in Singapore and was scaled accordingly.

"For the most part, it stayed one step ahead of the virus," he told the ABC.

"For instance, when news first got out that something was going on in China, plans were already put in place, that should such cases appear in Singapore, we will respond in certain ways."

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Professor Ooi said ultimately what authorities wanted to prevent was death from infection, so they needed to ensure there were enough intensive care unit beds and ventilators for the number of severe cases.

Japan and South Korea have about seven to eight acute-care hospital beds per 1,000 people, while the UK and Italy had about two to three hospital beds per 1,000 people, according to 2017 data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Meanwhile, Germany — which has also had a relatively successful battle with COVID-19 and is now looking to ease lockdown measures — has about six acute care hospital beds per 1,000 population.

But Giacomo Grasselli, a senior Italian health official at the epicentre of Lombardy's coronavirus crisis, has said that a large outbreak would overwhelm the system "no matter how efficient, good, and modern it is", and the key was controlling the spread of the disease.

Testing widely, digital technology and communication

South Korea has also set up drive-through testing centres to test more people. ( Reuters: Kim Kyung-Hoon )

South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong — which all had some successes in battling the spread of COVID-19 — have one thing in common: rigorous testing and contact tracing.

At one stage, South Korea had the highest number of cases outside of China, but the country managed to control the spread and was testing nearly 20,000 per day in mid-March.

The country has also set up drive-through testing centres and deployed digital tracking technology — including CCTV footage, credit card transactions and smartphone location data — to monitor potential patients.

Similarly, Singapore's containment strategy has also involved testing the contacts of infected individuals, which enabled the island-state to identify many asymptomatic cases.

Singapore's fatality rate is also hovering around 0.1 per cent, which Professor Ooi said was due to its screening process.

"The reason why it's so low in Singapore is not because we are healthier or fitter … but the fact is that the denominator is large, we detect a lot more cases," he explained.

However, he also admitted that "Singapore didn't get everything right" as cases in the country recently more than doubled to some 11,200 — with many of the newly infected being migrant workers who live in tight dormitories.

Singapore's containment strategy has also involved testing the contacts of infected individuals, ( Reuters: Edgar Su )

To curb the sharp rise in infections, the Singaporean Government imposed a partial lockdown — or what it calls a "circuit breaker" — which was this week extended until June 1.

Professor Ooi said daily news reports of how many cases there were, and how the cases were linked, had created a sense of confidence in how the crisis was managed.

"And when in times of crisis, people look to authority, and when they see that authorities are on top of things, that creates confidence, and people are then even more likely to follow the lead," he said.

In contrast, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been accused of sending conflicting messages to the nation.

After days of trying to coax the country into isolation in March, he told reporters: "I want, of course I do, people to be able to go to the parks, open spaces and enjoy themselves."

The UK also has a relatively low testing rate of 8,200 per million population — roughly half of Singapore's 16,203 per million, according to Worldometer, a website aggregating declared coronavirus statistics.

According to the BBC, testing is also not yet available for most people. Eligibility has only recently been expanded beyond health and care workers to include other frontline workers like police, the fire service and prison officers.

'Most people willingly submit themselves to authority'

Asia is bracing itself for what could be a second wave of coronavirus infections. ( AP: Gemunu Amarasinghe )

There are also less tangible factors for why many Asian countries have tackled the pandemic more effectively, such as culture and politics.

Lee Sung-yoon, an international relations professor at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, said traditions of Confucianism in countries like China, South Korea, and Singapore gave "the paternalistic state a freer hand in exercising authority" during an emergency.

"In the Confucian civilisation … respect for authority, social stability, conformity, the good of the society and nation above individualism … are an ameliorating factor in a time of national crisis," he said.

"Most people willingly submit themselves to authority and few complain."

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Mr Lee said the use of tracking bracelets to enforce coronavirus quarantine in Hong Kong and South Korea would likely not be tolerated in Italy or Sweden.

"In an advanced democracy — which none of the Confucian states including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan [are yet] — coercive measures in the initial phase of an epidemic like the confinement in the Diamond Princess as viral infection spread like wildfire, a lock down of tens of millions of people in Wuhan and its vicinity … would hardly be tolerated," he said.

Coronavirus was a disaster for Italy, which has an older population. ( Reuters: Flavio Lo Scalzo )

Italy was the first country in the West to issue a nationwide lockdown order on March 9, but frustration grew as many people defied the order.

According to the Guardian, Italian authorities pressed charges against more than 40,000 people for violating the lockdown imposed to contain the coronavirus between March 11 and March 17.

There was also early defiance of orders in Australia, with crowds of people gathering on Sydney's Bondi Beach leading to its temporary closure last month.

Compared to Asian countries, Dr Slutkin said the West was primarily a much more "individualistic society" and "less of a communal society".

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 59 seconds 59 s Groups of protesters gathered across the United States

Across the United States, protesters have been taking to the streets in protest of lockdown orders — the most recent demonstrations were in Texas, Indiana and Wisconsin last weekend.

Professor Hunter said he suspected culture also played a role in the way in which the virus spread.

"When I see my friends and colleagues from European countries, it's shaking hands, hugs, and kisses. So you get into people's personal space in Europe," he said.

"In Japan, you bow at a distance, and you don't really shake hands, although the Japanese do shake hands with Europeans, because they know that's what we do.

"People seem to keep themselves a bit more reserved in Japan than in [some other] countries."

Professor Hunter added that while the UK had "something to learn from far eastern countries" — like Japan, where the virus was spreading less aggressively — he wasn't quite sure what that was yet.

Are some governments better at handling a pandemic?

Countries which had successfully slowed the spread of the virus have conducted rigorous testing. ( Reuters )

Some have questioned whether an authoritarian government like China's is better-equipped to handle a pandemic, but others have also pointed to the regime's flaws in suppressing critical information early on during the outbreak.

And while one-party states including North Korea and Laos claim to have zero and 19 confirmed cases respectively, a culture of censorship in both countries mean it's hard to know for sure how well the countries are doing.

Indonesia, which only announced its first two confirmed cases in early March, now has the most coronavirus-related deaths in Asia outside of China.

Mr Lee believed the success of infectious disease containment lied less in the form of government (democracy versus authoritarian) or culture (Protestant versus Confucian), but more on institutional memory — such as China's experience with SARS.

"In the future, I believe the US and European states will be far better prepared in the allocation of funds, medical resources, hospital beds, kits, PPEs, make-shift facilities for testing, et cetera," he said.

"They will be better prepared to respond in a more expeditious and transparent manner with fewer infringements on individual rights the next time a pandemic engulfs them."

In some Western countries, there has already been a significant shift in the attitude towards wearing masks — even though the WHO still currently discourages the mass use of masks by healthy people in the wider community.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had a similar stance until it announced earlier this month that Americans should wear cloth face coverings in public areas where social distancing measures are hard to maintain, such as grocery stores and pharmacies.

"Until a couple of weeks ago [in the US], if you wore a mask then you look like a sick patient, and everyone would stay away from you," Mr Lee said.

"Now, if you don't wear a mask, you look like you don't care and you could be a carrier, so people frown on you."

While Australia and New Zealand are both considered Western countries despite being closer to Asia, they have achieved early success with relatively low fatality rates.

As of Thursday evening, Australia had recorded 76 deaths from COVID-19 from some 6,548 cases.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said during a media briefing yesterday that while the number of deaths domestically was "never good", Australia's coronavirus mortality is lower than some countries with half our population.

During an interview on Sky News on Wednesday night, Mr Morrison said Mr Trump had told him during a phone call earlier in the day that he was "pretty impressed" with how Australia had handled the pandemic.

"One of the things we discussed in particular was the fact that we both made the decision about the same time to ensure that we blocked off those incoming visitors from China, mainland China," Mr Morrison told Sky News.

But while Australia is seeing early signs of stabilisation, there are still some 27,000 people in the US being diagnosed each day, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.