Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

We identify the core barriers to co-production during the pandemic: Pace, distance and complexity, and provide a broad framework which can be designed into a project's main policy framework to facilitate co-production in preparedness and response.

Follow the source link below to TMB Issue 33 to read this briefing in full (p.3-6).

Vaccines must be a global public good, which contribute to the equitable protection and promotion of human well-being among all people. At national level, a clear aim for vaccine programmes is essential, e.g. reduce immediate risk to life, in order to inform the identification of priority groups. As sufficient vaccine supply for whole populations will not be immediately available, WHO have provided a Prioritization Roadmap and a Values Framework, to assist with the prioritization of target groups. The WHO guidelines and framework advise to:

• Identify groups that will achieve the vaccine programme aim where there is an immediate risk to life, e.g. Stage 1 Priority Group - Care home residents, staff and volunteers working in care homes; Stage 2 Priority - Frontline health workers and those of 80 years of age and over. Priority groups should be listed and detailed to cover the whole population that is to be vaccinated
• Clearly define groups within priority phases, e.g. workers who are at very high risk of becoming infected and transmitting COVID-19 because they work in, for example, frontline health care, COVID-19 treatment centres, COVID-19 testing laboratories, or have direct contact with COVID-19 infected patients
• Avoid classifying groups as 'essential workers' as a qualifier
• Make priority groups explicit, straightforward, concise and publicly available
• Assess the prioritisation of those who are in high population density settings, e.g. refugees/detention camps, prisons; or who are not recorded in existing systems, e.g. un-registered persons
• Recognise vaccination as a global issue to begin conversations that identify how we will achieve the aim of reducing immediate risk to life globally, through international collaboration

The evacuation and shelter of people during a major emergency is a challenging task under normal conditions but, in the context of COVID-19, social restrictions, and potential to transmit the virus, it becomes even more complex. When planning for evacuation and shelter during COVID-19, consider:

• Provide more transport to comply with social distancing measures
• Rapidly expand shelter capacity, through building or identifying a greater number of current buildings for use as shelters, so as provide greater areas for social distancing
• Consider adapting industries to help prepare for a safer evacuation of populations away from high risk areas. For example, repurposing the garment industry to manufacture personal protective equipment (PPE) for volunteers use in Bangladesh
• Separate suspected COVID-19 patients in specific separate shelters
• Reducing chances of person to person contact by introducing public announcements/mass communication tools such as community radio and electronic media
• Create operational systems which allow for autonomy so responders can work efficiently without constant contact with HQ's if they happen to be under different lockdown restrictions
• Combine early warning messages with Covid-19 warning messages

Standards-making organisations have made freely available a range of standards which may be useful to tackling COVID-19. These cover topics such as:

• Humanitarian (ISO22395 vulnerable people, ISO22319 spontaneous volunteers)
• Economic (ISO22316 organizational resilience, ISO 22301 business continuity management systems)
• Infrastructure (ISO/TS 22318 supply chain continuity, CSA Z8002 infection control systems)
• Environment (BS 67000 city resilience)
• Communication (C63.27 evaluation of wireless co-existence)
• Governance and Legislation (ISO 22320 emergency management, ISO31000 risk management)
• Medical (ISO 10651 lung ventilators, EN14683 face masks)

Such bodies have also been taking various sources of government guidance and synthesising their messages into a single guide to support their members to understand how to follow those guidance (e.g. safe working, working in the new normal).

TMB Issue 10 brings together the reflections of our learning from the first 10 weeks of gathering lessons on recovery and renewal from COVID-19. Follow the source link below to read all of the reflections from our team (p.9-15).

Local government should develop recovery plans that include potential for cascading, simultaneous disasters which may require emergency responses activities e.g. evacuation of homes during a flood, amid the epidemic.