Report
Letter to CitiesCOVID-19 has engulfed almost the entire world, challenging governments to act in ways normally reserved for war, depressions, and natural disasters. Governments at different levels across the world are taking extreme measures to limit loss of human lives and minimize economic disruption. In the rapidly developing crisis, faced with a plethora of information from multiple sources including social media, citizens look to their governments for credible information, guidance, and leadership to keep them safe and healthy and avoid economic hardship. This report models the COVID-19 crisis over time across the three overlapping phases governments are expected to encounter: Respond, Recover, and Thrive.
At each phase, government’s guiding metric should be its impact on people. In the short term, this means a focus on containment, treatment, and economic survival. In the medium term, the goal will need to shift towards economic recovery and return to the new normal. In the long term, it should hope to emerge better prepared to adapt to this or anytype of crisis, better positioned to promote the well-being of the citizens.