Best Practices for Calamity-Ready Governments

— By Ngaire Woods

OXFORD – To the dismay of immunologists, virologists, and public-health experts, governments are done with learning the lessons of COVID-19. Policymakers around the world, faced with a cost-of-living crisis, are balking at spending enormous amounts of money on pandemic preparedness. But some of the key lessons concern the workings of government, and even cash-strapped countries should take basic steps to improve their crisis-management capabilities. These measures could also help them prepare for climate change and other potential emergencies.

The United Kingdom’s experience offers some important insights. Just before the emergence of COVID-19, the UK ranked second on the Global Health Security Index, which rated countries’ capacity to detect, prevent, and report epidemics. In 2016, the British government ran a three-day simulation to estimate the impact of a potential flu pandemic, creating a risk-management playbook that it could use in the event of a contagious outbreak. Even so, the UK struggled to control COVID-19 more than it should have. As a recent report by Ciaran Martin and his co-authors shows, the likely culprit behind the country’s messy pandemic response was not a lack of preparedness, but rather a dysfunctional political system.

During the pandemic, some countries managed effective coordination between central and subnational governments. In Germany, for example, national and state-level policymakers came together during the first few months of COVID-19 to forge a unified approach that allowed for diverse local responses. Similarly, Australian decision-makers joined forces during the initial outbreak to develop a coherent national strategy that integrated local expertise.

In the UK, by contrast, the pandemic strained the relationships between the British government and the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The national government took over the nationwide procurement of personal protective equipment and diagnostics in the first few weeks of the pandemic and spearheaded the Coronavirus Jobs Retention Scheme (otherwise known as the “furlough scheme”) with Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland following suit.

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