Coronavirus-related curbs have led to a spike in first-time Internet users across six South-East Asian countries, according to a Google report published Tuesday.

Forty million people went online for the first time in 2020, according to the report, which covered Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

This year’s net novices made up almost one-third of the region’s 140 million new users since 2015 and amounted to four times as many as in 2019.

The report - co-authored by Temasek, a Singaporean investment fund, and Bain & Company, a US-based consultancy - said that the novel coronavirus pandemic resulted in “big shifts” in Internet use “across the region”.

“Eight out of ten people across the region said technology helped them get through the virus,” the report claimed.

Google's regional Vice President Stephanie Davis said “more than one in every three digital service consumers started using a new type of online service due to Covid-19”.

Lockdowns were imposed in all six countries after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the virus outbreak a pandemic in March, spurring the uptake of online services such as food delivery and applications facilitating working from home.

The report estimates “the gross merchandise value of the regional internet economy” at US$100bil , slightly less than a third of Malaysia’s gross domestic product and a sum the authors expect to triple by 2025.

Altogether, the report said, around 400 million people across the six countries are Internet users - 70% of their combined population of 580 million.

 - dpa