COVID-19 has not only upended our lives but also changed the ways in which we engage with anything else, and especially public policy. Governments around the world have responded differently to threats posed by COVID-19, implementing a variety of measures to contain the spread of the virus and save lives. The focus of many interventions has been about saving lives and sustaining an economy while in lockdown.

In this episode, we look at measures that governments right across the world have taken to contain the spread of COVID-19. Our first discussant, Tom Hale, an Associate Professor in Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government joins us to talk about the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, which has been collating data on the different policy responses governments around the world have taken to contain the outbreak.

We then talk to two students; Pollyana Lima from Brazil, and Femi Adebola from Nigeria, who are currently reading for a Master of Public Policy (MPP) at the Blavatnik School. They been working closely on the Government Response Tracker, and share insights on some of the interesting patterns in responses from governments around the world and reflect on how their respective governments have responded.

While some political leaders, like the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly referred to the virus as a “little flu”. We engaged with someone who had the “little flu”, Woo Wee Meng, also reading for an MPP, paints an intimate picture about life in quarantine and isolation in Singapore with COVID-19.