Successful Government Responses to the Pandemic: Contextualizing National and Urban Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in East and West

Successful Government Responses to the Pandemic: Contextualizing National and Urban Responses to the COVID-19 Outbreak in East and West

Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 17
DOI: 10.4018/IJEPR.20210401.oa1
Article PDF Download
Open access articles are freely available for download

Abstract

This article discusses national and local strategies for confronting COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis sheds light on how societal context, institutional arrangements, knowledge culture, and technology deployment manifest in national responses to the pandemic. Discussion describes country cases from East and South East Asia, on the one hand, and from Europe and Asia-Pacific, on the other. The overall impression is that Asian cases reflect proactivity and diligence, while Western responses are reactive and more often than not slightly delayed. Both country groups include successes, while the overwhelming majority of global benchmarks are Asian. As the management of COVID-19 crisis is essentially a multi-level governance issue, discussion about national strategies is supplemented with a glance at the role of cities. The COVID-19-related urban challenges revolve around increased interest in urban safety, creative approaches to and the uses of urban space, the rise of digital urban platforms, and deeper insights on citizen engagement.
Article Preview
Top

2. Covid-19 Pandemic

Coronavirus disease 2019, abbreviated to COVID-19, is a shorter name given to a novel virus identified as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). It is an infectious disease caused by then new coronavirus that started to develop from Wuhan, China, in late 2019. It causes a sudden respiratory infection, which can be mild especially among children and healthy adults, but can be fatal to old people as well as those with underlying medical condition. Some 20-30% of infected people have required hospitalization, about 4% being seriously ill and for some of them the disease being fatal. As it is a new virus, nobody has prior immunity, which means that the entire human population is potentially susceptible to COVID-19 infection. (ECDC, 2020.)

Complete Article List

Search this Journal:
Reset
Volume 13: 1 Issue (2024)
Volume 12: 1 Issue (2023)
Volume 11: 1 Issue (2022)
Volume 10: 4 Issues (2021)
Volume 9: 4 Issues (2020)
Volume 8: 4 Issues (2019)
Volume 7: 4 Issues (2018)
Volume 6: 4 Issues (2017)
Volume 5: 4 Issues (2016)
Volume 4: 4 Issues (2015)
Volume 3: 4 Issues (2014)
Volume 2: 4 Issues (2013)
Volume 1: 4 Issues (2012)
View Complete Journal Contents Listing