Matías Acosta - Head of Exploration - UNDP AccLab Argentina - @DrMatias Acosta

How can we slow-down the COVID-19 propagation in our country? How can we use the experience acquired during these challenging times to be more resilient in future pandemics? Should the government take a central role in designing solutions or perhaps coordinate and scale-up solutions coming from different sections and regions from our country? These are challenging questions indeed, and while we are immersed in the pandemic, it is quite hard to find the answers. Vietnam and Taiwan gained experience on combating pandemics during the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic in 2002. They developed strict protocols which centralized actions and efforts on their national governments. What have these countries done to mitigate COVID-19 spread? Is it really the path that we, in Argentina, should follow? Or shall we develop one that considers our country’s decentralized features?

Vietnam and Taiwan have developed more than 350 public policies during the early stages of COVID-19 spread. Hence, analyzing all of them is a challenging task. Yet, scientists developed big data analytics capable of summarizing all the information.(La et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020) If you want to read a summary and comparative of these works, we invite you to read the following article: Comparing public policy (...)

An important aspect is that both countries have central units in charge of overviewing the pandemic protocols. In the case of Taiwan, this is the National Health Command Center (NHCC), whereas in the case of Vietnam, the overview of the situation was carried out by the Ministry of Health together with a purposely created national steering committee. In Argentina, the strategy is similar to that of Vietnam since the Presidency and the Ministry of Health coordinate government actions. However, Argentina is a federal country characterized by decentralized decision-making thereby making the coordination of policies and interventions a challenging task. This also implies that decisions at the national level may have less incidence at the municipal level than those made at Taiwan or Vietnam.

During the first days of the epidemic, Vietnam and Taiwan followed similar interventions. Before the detection of the first case, they both assessed the risks, organized coordinated multi-actor responses, and informed the public about the potential risks of the crisis. In contrast, Argentina began implementing the majority of the policies once the World Health Organization declared the pandemic. Moreover, the first COVID-19 case detected in Argentina was on March 3, which was more than a month after the first detected cases both in Taiwan and Vietnam. Hence, the initial response time of the Argentine government prior to the first case detected was much slower than in Taiwan and Vietnam.

After the first case was detected, Vietnam and Taiwan implemented effective systems of coordinated action across ministries, emergency centers, and relevant industries. Moreover, the price of essential medical and sanitary equipment were fixed as well as schools closed or suspended by the 15th day after the first case was detected. In the case of Argentina, similar strategies were implemented following the H1N1 pandemic protocol put in place in 2009-2010 and following the government’s current action plan which was developed to combat COVID-19.

Despite acting similarly in the early stages of the epidemic, Taiwan’s and Vietnam’s strategies started differing as COVID-19 spread. Taiwan focused largely on restricting travel to/from the country and producing medical and sanitary equipment to prevent the spread of the virus internally. On the other hand, Vietnam’s main focus was on the organization of healthcare provision, training of medical staff, and the limitation of activity in public spaces.  In this stage, Argentina reacted with measures similar to those of both countries and at a similar pace (relative to the first COVID-19 case detected in each country).

Despite having implemented similar policies and in similar time frames since the first case was detected, the amount of COVID-19 cases both in Taiwan and Vietnam is below 500 cases, whereas in Argentina is above 4000 to date (28/04/2020). There are many explanations that could help us understand this major difference. Firstly, implementation of policies does not necessarily reflect the adoption of such policies by the citizens, there might be a time delay.

Figure 1, for instance, was created adapting data from Google’s mobility reports and it shows that most of the people stopped going to work and remained at home around 15 to 20 days after the first COVID-19 case detected in Argentina. This coincides approximately with the implementation of the complete isolation strategy of the Argentine government, but it can be seen that the transient time of change in mobility did take some days.

Figure 1: mobility reports of citizens in their home and work. Data was adapted from Google’s mobility reports.

Secondly, control measures in Vietnam and Taiwán have been quite strict. Figure 2 shows an example of the rapid response of Taiwanese government. After just 45 minutes following the disappearance of the GPS signal of one citizen, the government was already in contact with him through his phone. Because there was no answer, the government sent policemen to the person’s house, they arrived only 50 minutes after the initial GPS disappearance. Such level of control is not feasible in Argentina due to our own culture, idiosyncrasy, and the federal characteristics of our country. However, this does provide us a lesson. The implementation of public policies and control mechanisms of pandemic protocols should represent the reality of each country. Hence, we wonder, how can we actually make use of the decentralized structure of our country to combat COVID-19 effectively?

Figure 2: Twitter example that shows the strict control of policies implemented by the Taiwanese government to combat COVID-19.

The decentralized structure of Argentina makes the development of pandemic protocols challenging. Yet, it offers the opportunity to promote innovation arising from the public sector and civil society, which may not necessarily occur in more controlled and central structures. For instance, the COVID-19 outbreak led to a large number of innovations at municipal level. As can be seen in the Gestión Municipal platform, initiated by the Red de Innovación Local, there have been more than 360 local public policy innovations developed to combat COVID-19. They range from infrastructural solutions to new communications tools, among many other areas.

Besides, civil society has also responded quite fast and has developed several collaborative groups to support each other like Sesenta, or also to support small and medium companies  like Salvemos a las Pymes. In addition, there have been efforts to map solutions and geo-localize them, as in the case of Frena la Curva. Such repositories offer unique insights into innovations and tools that could be transformative for local populations.

An important aspect is that local innovations that are working effectively offer a unique opportunity to develop bottom-up public policies. Several local innovative projects have indeed shown that it is quite possible to scale them even to other countries, as has been the case with Gestión Municipal and Frena la Curva. Big data analysis could certainly play a big role in finding local solutions coming from the public sector and civil society. It can help coordinate efforts to develop partnerships and thus avoid duplicating efforts. This becomes especially relevant in federal countries like Argentina. Certainly, big data analysis could become a key tool to build a new pandemic protocol in our country that features local innovation and participatory approaches. For the time being, we will keep on exploring more aspects related to COVID-19 and how to promote innovative methodologies that can help us combat its spread and provide the basis for a fast socioeconomic recovery. What do you think? Would you like to collaborate with us?

*Matias Acosta - Argentine Accelerator Lab, United Nations Development Programme, 130 Esmeralda St, C1035ABD Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

*Matias Nestore - Culture, Politics and Global Justice Research Cluster, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB28PQ, United Kingdom