AMMAN, Jordan — As the COVID-19 caseload rises once again in Jordan, the government calmed fears that a complete lockdown would be reinstituted, heeding the advice of Jordanian economists who warned that the economy “could not bear such a move.”

Though Jordan seems to have survived the coronavirus pandemic relatively unscathed thus far — 1,532 cases and 11 deaths to date — there have been major economic consequences of what was dubbed “the world’s toughest lockdown.” According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, by the end of the year a quarter of the country’s labor force will be out of work and gross domestic product is expected to have shrunk by 5% — Jordan’s first economic contraction in over 30 years.

Seemingly in anticipation of coming economic turmoil, the Jordanian government has adopted a harsh stance against dissent. On July 25, it shuttered the country’s largest independent labor union, the Teachers Syndicate, rolling back post-Arab Spring democratic reforms that had allowed the union to open in 2012.

Since closing the 140,000-member union, the government has detained all 13 representatives on the leadership council on undisclosed charges and arrested over 1,000 protesters who took to the streets in opposition to the decision, according to the union’s lawyer, Bassem Frehat.