'governance' in all aspects is the job of the government, including anticipated behavior of citizens (=humans) - they have different administrative departments just for that.What can probably government do? Travel was banned. Country was under locked down. Yet, the disease spread like wildfire.
If citizen's are irresponsible. Government can't do anything.
In my opinion administrations that did not had to face virus spreads in the past were clueless on how to handle a virus this infectious. Countries (government, administrations and people) that had to face virus breakouts in the past had already learnt the lesson and was able to handle it really well (& to some extent Kerala here)
We see high numbers because our defense is not strong enough to fight this enemy. If south east countries really have the infection under control, we should learn from them and adapt/adopt for the situation here.