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International researchers set out to compare different countries' COVID-19 responses

September 17, 2020

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200917/International-researchers-set-out-to-compare-different-countries-COVID-19-responses.aspx

Eye of the storm

A first paper with findings from the research project is published in the journal Global Public Health, arguing that the different responses to COVID-19 and their effects cannot be understood without an in-depth analysis of policy and politics in the various countries concerned. The authors propose four key focuses to understand the reasons for COVID-19 responses: social policies to manage the economic crisis and recovery, political regime (democracy or authoritarianism), formal political institutions including subnational governments, and state capacity, especially control of health care systems and public administration.

"The measures taken to deal with the pandemic tend to be similar because of the profile of the disease, the recommendations of the World Health Organization [WHO] and observation of what worked in the first countries affected, such as lockdown in Wuhan, or mass testing and tracing in South Korea," Fonseca said. "We're going to look at the fit between what worked well and the characteristics of the countries concerned, in a comparative analysis focusing on regional and institutional variables."

Countries that suffered signal failures in the past are now displaying higher levels of efficacy. "South Africa, for example, responded very wrongly to the AIDS epidemic. The president at the time actually denied the importance of public policy to deal with it. Now, however, all these years later in a different epidemic the country's response has been relatively effective," she said.

Analyzing the response to a pandemic, including possible resurgences and fresh waves, requires a certain temporal distance, but at the same time, there is an urgent need to collect primary data and find explanations for successes and failures in combating COVID-19.