Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

Korea held an election during the COVID-19 pandemic. The government ensured a number of voting rights for:

• Confirmed COVID-19 patients
• Those who were subject to movement restrictions and became infected with the virus after the registration period expired
• Those who came into contact with self-quarantined persons and were also quarantined
• Overseas arrivals who were subject to movement restrictions up until Election Day on April 15 2020

Officials' actions included:

• Texting eligible voters in self-quarantine before the vote - about 13,000 affirmed they wanted to participate
• Marking a metre of social distancing space to ballot booths from nearby streets
• Giving permission to those without fever or respiratory symptoms to leave their homes so they could cast their ballots after 6pm, when polling stations closed for other voters
• Escorting voters and monitoring COVID-19 positive voters through tracking apps
• Providing masks to poll workers
• Checking temperatures of voters on arrival and moving anyone with a fever or not wearing a mask to separate areas to vote
• Sanitising the facilities after voters
• Providing voters who pass the fever screening with sanitising gel and disposable plastic gloves before entering a voting booth
• Encouraging voting via mail for hospital patients or those who were under two-week quarantine
• Organising an early voting period for those who were mildly ill - 400 people cast their votes at temporary booths

Local government should assess the 'Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Public Health' and whether it is helpful to their recovery planning for Covid-19. The assessment should consider its attributes for providing holistic needs assessments through its multi-sectoral rapid assessments for recovery.