The coronavirus pandemic has led to millions of deaths around the world. In many countries, it has also exposed long-standing inequities and injustices in health care, income distribution, labour market practice, and social protection for the poor, women, indigenous peoples, and other marginalized segments of the population. The disproportionate casualties among vulnerable populations have also exposed predatory corporate practices, such as the refusal to share vaccine patents with low-income countries (LIC) in the Global South. World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has warned that this “vaccine apartheid” could lead to the further spread of more dangerous forms of virus variants, and that global solidarity and collaboration may be the only viable approach to current and future pandemics.1 Scientists have long warned that the continued destruction of the environment and ecological diversity would lead to future waves of cross-species (zoonotic) viral pandemics, due to the elimination of “natural borders” that once existed between human and non-human species. In the last several decades alone, humanity has suffered from five major zoonotic pandemics: AIDS, SARS, MARS, Ebola, and COVID-19.2 This Special Issue focuses on a select group of Asian countries in order to critically examine the impact of socio-legal inequities in state-centric policies upon domestic populations, including indigenous peoples, and to explore the possibility of international collaborative strategies for controlling the spread of deadly viruses and their variants in the coming years and decades, in Asia and beyond.

冠状病毒大流行已导致全世界数百万人死亡。在许多国家，它还暴露了在医疗保健、收入分配、劳动力市场实践以及对穷人、妇女、土著人民和其他边缘群体的社会保护方面长期存在的不平等和不公正现象。弱势群体的不成比例的伤亡也暴露了企业的掠夺性做法，例如拒绝与南半球低收入国家（LIC）分享疫苗专利。世界卫生组织（WHO）总干事谭德塞警告说，这种“疫苗种族隔离”可能导致更危险的病毒变种形式的进一步传播，全球团结与合作可能是当前和未来唯一可行的方法流行病。1科学家们长期以来一直警告说，由于人类和非人类物种之间曾经存在的“自然边界”被消除，对环境和生态多样性的持续破坏将导致未来的跨物种（人畜共患）病毒大流行浪潮。仅在过去几十年里，人类就遭受了五种主要的人畜共患流行病：艾滋病、非典、火星、埃博拉和新冠病毒 (COVID-19)。2本期特刊重点关注选定的亚洲国家群体，以批判性地审视以国家为中心的政策中的社会法律不平等对国内民众（包括土著人民）的影响，并探讨控制艾滋病蔓延的国际合作战略的可能性。未来几年和几十年，亚洲及其他地区的致命病毒及其变种。