Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

There have been well-documented breaches of the COVID-19 rules in, for example, workplaces, shops, public spaces. This has caused frustration and resentment, and made front-line staff question their perceived value and sacrifice. Current enforcement of the rules is led by the authorities, but there is potential for the public to report breaches via whistleblowing apps, which may help to target official enforcement activities. Consider:

• The potential to establish a whistleblowing app to collect information from the public on COVID-19 breaches
• Who should initiate and own an app to allow the public to report COVID-19 breaches, including the potential hesitation the public may have to report via Police websites
• Whether reports will be made anonymously by the public
• How to address and mitigate the potential for malicious or bogus reports
• What thresholds need to be met before action is taken
• How to analyse app data to identify patterns and trends of where, when and what breaches occur
• How to report back on subsequent enforcement actions and outcomes to individual whistle-blowers and to the wider public
• The need to increase capacity to engage, explain and encourage compliance by, for example, staff, trained volunteers, neighbourhood watch, local organisations (see COVID Marshals TMB Issue 28 (hyper) January 22nd)
• How to raise public awareness of whistleblowing apps to ensure that a lack of public awareness does not hinder their effectiveness

COVID-19 has strained food producers and distributors (e.g. disrupted food supply chains, problematized crop harvesting, impacted logistics and distribution), and this has impacted the amount of food waste created in the supply chain. COVID-19 has also changed household food waste creation by affecting household income, shopping habits and consumption patterns. The implications are broad. For example, the real cost of food has increased for some vulnerable households, who must purchase from supermarkets that will deliver rather than shop at their usual 'cheaper' shops. Food waste has become an important concern for organisations and households, and some countries are taking strong action. Consider:

• Charge businesses and families that waste food (such as in South Korea, where the proportion of recycling food increased from 2% to 95% in 2009)
• Strengthen partnerships between food producers and distributors and local food initiatives
• Develop local agriculture and growing food in and around cities, e.g. Singapore identified unused spaces in its cities to create urban farms to address supply chain issues cause by COVID-19
• Partner with local volunteer initiatives that tackle food poverty and food waste:
  • Ensure voluntary food distribution groups have the necessary equipment to store nutritious food and distribute that to the community
  • Set up community fridges, e.g. local parishes or town halls to support local groups
  • To ensure food that is not fit for consumption is recycled appropriately
  • Support groups in the collection, transportation and redistribution of food
• Educate households on:
  • How to store food safely after purchasing
  • Safe ways to store and re-use leftovers
  • How to correctly recycle food waste
  • Recipes on for using leftover ingredients
  • How to safely donate excess food
  • How to interpret food labels correctly

GISs use computer-based tools to allow users to create interactive queries, edit and analyse spatial data and to visually share results by presenting them as maps or other infographics in real-time. During COVID-19 GISs have been used to reveal patterns and trends to help communicate information to the public, develop forecasting tools to identify trends in the virus’ transmission, and to support resource allocation during COVID response. Consider using GIS to:

• Develop publicly available maps. In Singapore, a publicly available real-time map updates on the current situation in public spaces. This can help residents to plan their activities safely e.g. show how busy public spaces are and the location of less busy spaces
• Provide near real-time updates of estimated wait times at Accident & Emergency. In Northern Ireland, a dashboard is updated hourly by NIDirect (an official government website) that provides information on open hospitals and wait times
• Inform people about changes in business operations and location of key services. In New Zealand, officials built a map that shows open businesses and whether or not the organization’s operations have been impacted e.g. reduced hours or closures
• Develop self-reporting health systems. In Switzerland, public health officials built a crowdsourcing application for people to anonymously self-report their health status. In addition, they can report their post code, age, size of household, living situation, and pre-existing health conditions. The results are shown on a map that health officials can use to assess gaps in confirmed cases and areas where people are self-reporting symptoms, and to identify areas for intervention

With social distancing, limited public transport, and advice on safe working practices, some employers have closed work sites and have required staff to work from home. Many staff report that they work from home diligently, often putting in extra time to support their employer. However, some staff report suspicion that colleagues who are being paid to work from home are not working diligently; for example, logging onto work but not working, failing to attend meetings or provide agreed deliverables, enjoying alternative activities when they should be working, or working reduced hours. In recognition of the disparity between peoples' approaches to working from home, consider:

• how perceived disparity of effort may build resentment across the workforce
• how resentment may manifest itself, create difficult interpersonal working environments, and when intervention from senior staff is needed
• whether this perceived disparity will change work cultures and expectations beyond COVID-19

To address any resentment, consider:

• keeping an open mind on why resentment has developed
• addressing resentment by talking with staff regularly and when resentment is first detected
• identifying how different staff contribute to the organisation in different ways and why these may not always be visible to other colleagues
• communicating justification for work allocation across staff, ensuring fairness at work
• how the organisations may support staff to improve arrangements for working from home
• when conversations are needed to address performance concerns

Consider:

• Enhance Small - Medium Enterprise loans and provide businesses with continuous access to credit during these hard times
• Require that banks and finance companies which apply for low-cost government funding to pass on the savings to their borrowers
• Improve digital innovation to support and enable SMEs to access global markets via business to business (B2B) or business to consumer (B2C) digital channels, and to participate in B2B marketplaces so as to benefit from overseas procurement demand

Attempts to quarantine and sanitise informal settlements at the time of the 2014 Ebola crisis ended with mixed, if not poor results, along with violence and revolts due to poor preparation, planning and information sharing with the population. Consideration of these issues during a global pandemic is important to mitigate the risk of resurgence

Singapore's recent spike in COVID-19 cases is an example of this issue; the spike originated from the country's vast migrant worker population who live in poor conditions in crowded dormitories. Workers have been quarantined in their small, over-populated rooms for two weeks. It will be important to consider health and well-being and the potential for unrest in these contexts.

This can help to prevent deaths and stop the number of cases accelerating as suppression measures are eased. The benefits of these measures are:

1. Containment measures allow us to reduce suppression measures without the spread of the virus accelerating
2. Shielding the vulnerable allows us to reduce the death toll of the virus even if the spread of the virus does accelerate. Older people and people with relevant health conditions would be protected

European countries are starting to ease, but containment and shielding capacity appears limited, risking acceleration of the virus. East Asia has advanced containment capacity and anticipate better testing and tracing capacity and widespread use of masks.

Local government should advise that, for some populations, it will not be possible to ease restrictions on their movement outside of the home until:

• an effective vaccine is developed
• an effective treatment is developed
• community-wide immunity is achieved to reduce the risk to acceptable levels for all groups

These individuals will require protection that includes isolation and will need a blend of national and community-based programs. For example:

• Delivery of food and medicine
• Provision of a specialized medical care environment
• Social support
• Financial assistance e.g. for basic living expenses