Dear colleagues –

Please find attached a note on ‘Managing the Employment Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis’, produced by the World Bank Jobs Group. It reviews a variety of available policy options in a succinct and practical manner, and I hope you find it useful and timely.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or would like for us to organize a follow-up discussion with our World Bank experts. 

Dear colleagues –

FYI, I am attaching two scientific articles from Harvard University and ISI/ GISC on the effectiveness of social distancing strategies, as well as two World Bank papers, the first of which looks at the lessons-learned from Italy’s COVID-19 response and the second reviewing Global Social Protection Responses to COVID-19, which I know you are contemplating as we speak.  I have summarized key take-aways below: 

• https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42638988: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is straining healthcare resources worldwide, prompting social distancing measures to reduce transmission intensity. The amount of social distancing needed to curb the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in the context of seasonally varying transmission remains unclear. Using a mathematical model, we assessed that one-time interventions will be insufficient to maintain COVID-19 prevalence within the critical care capacity of the United States. Seasonal variation in transmission will facilitate epidemic control during the summer months but could lead to an intense resurgence in the autumn. Intermittent distancing measures can maintain control of the epidemic, but without other interventions, these measures may be necessary into 2022. Increasing critical care capacity could reduce the duration of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic while ensuring that critically ill patients receive appropriate care.
• https://covid-19-sds.github.io/assets/pdfs/Preliminary_Report_Effectiveness_of_social_distance_strategies_COVID-19.pdf: Key findings 1. School closures do not have a major impact on controlling the epidemic, despite closing them, infections keep occurring within the households and the community layers. 2. Passive social distance strategies are not enough to contain the epidemic, indicating that active strategies need to be established. For instance, large scale testing, remote symptoms monitoring, isolation and contact tracing. 3. School closures and self-distancing at 90% of adoption is a feasible strategy for minimizing the effects of the epidemic, but only if they are applied for a long period of time. 4. A full confinement is not feasible and will not solve the problem, without active measures in place after the confinement, since there would be a new outbreak. 5. If high resolution mobility data is available, our data-driven approach with real world data can be easily replicated for new cities or countries to measure the impact of social distance strategies and the epidemic.
• Early lessons-learned from Italy: In response to previous epidemics of SARS and MERS, China, Singapore, and South Korea overhauled their emergency systems and strengthened public health and disease surveillance response systems, which enabled a swift response to the COVID-19 pandemics. Different countries worldwide have different levels of preparedness and have adopted different measures to combat COVID-19 pandemic, offering vital insight into the response. Lack of swift disease detection and containment measures can lead to overwhelmed health systems swiftly, and exceeding healthcare capacity can further exacerbate the community spread of SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19.  Timely disease control measures need to be accompanied with surge capacity to curb the exponential spread of COVID-19. The evidence suggests that travel restrictions only work if coupled with rapid testing, physical distancing, isolation, infection prevention and Control in HCWs etc. to break the chain of transmission.  In a globalized world where epidemics and pandemics are increasingly common, pandemic surge planning using the 4 S framework (Space, Stuff, Staff, and System) can enable bolstered surge response. The proposed recommendations contain short, medium, and long-term measures to operationalize surge response to COVID-19 in Italy; including short-term measures to scale up surge response using the 4 S framework; medium and long-term measures of gap analysis for legislative and institutional reforms, and health system strengthening respectively.
• A Global Review of Social Protection Responses to COVID-19: As of March 20, 2020, a total of 45 countries have introduced, adapted or expanded social protection programs in response to COVID-19. The most widely used measures include: cash transfers (30 programs), followed by wage subsidies (11), subsidized sick leave (10), and various forms of subsidized social security contributions and unemployment insurance.  A total of 13 new cash transfer programs have been introduced, like for example in Bolivia, India, Iran and Peru.  A universal, one-off cash payment to all citizens will occur in Hong-Kong and Singapore.  New in-kind schemes have also been launched, such as food vouchers in Taiwan and Seattle in the United States. Countries are adapting existing social assistance programs in various ways, by for instance: (i) anticipating payments of future cash transfer programs (Colombia and Indonesia); (ii) ensuring additional payments, often on a one-off basis (e.g., Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Turkey); (iii) providing more generous benefit levels (e.g., China); (iv) increasing the coverage of existing cash schemes (e.g., Brazil) and public works (Uzbekistan); (v) enhancing agility by suspending conditionalities in the UK and Italy; and (vi) providing innovative design solutions, such as school feeding programs delivering food directly to children’s homes or nearby centers (Jamaica and India’s Kerala state) or adapting their financing (Japan).  Income support in the form of childcare vouchers or allowances were provided in Italy, Poland and South Korea.  Other social assistance programs include support for homeless populations as planned in Spain; utility subsidies waiving fees for basic services are present in El Salvador; and wavers for loans and other financial obligations (e.g., Bolivia).  Many countries provide cash benefits to crisis-affected self-employed workers (e.g., Ireland, Portugal, New Zealand) and those in the informal sector (India). Some countries (e.g., Netherland) are reducing work time among the wage employed, combined with paid sick leave. Sweden is reducing the administrative time required for sick-leave payments, while Switzerland is doing so for the unemployment insurance process.  Delivery innovations are also emerging in Jordan (new cash program using same registration form of existing schemes), Japan (uploading transfers on phones), and Romania (enhanced electronic processes for benefits).

I hope you find these useful.