Initial COVID-19 responses in Bangladesh, Kenya, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and

This is an executive summary of the full report that documents the experiences and challenges of scaling up the response to COVID-19 in the first three months of the outbreak – March to May 2020 – in five countries: Bangladesh, Kenya, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, and Uganda. [...] • The graph in the upper half of the timeline displays the evolving number of confirmed cases and deaths attributed to COVID-19, with the logarithmic number scale displayed on the left of the graph. [...] 4.1 Competent leadership and multi-disciplinary team The institution of the state is most important at times of crisis, when citizens look to their governments for help and to deploy authority and resources to respond to and manage the situation. [...] However, the surge of cases prompted the National Security Committee to review the situation and to formulate a unified national response, designating the National Disaster Management Agency as the operational lead and a range of other committees and bodies formed. [...] Table 4 below summarises key scores for the Maintains countries – the response index scores the ability of a country to respond to and mitigate an epidemic’s spread, while the health index scores whether the health sector is sufficient and robust enough to treat the sick and protect health workers.