A report, published based on a comparative study of how some 27 countriesresponded to the emergence of the virus and first wave, and how they communicated that response to their citizens, revealed that Ghana and South Korea “got it right” in managing the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We invited national experts to analyse their government’s communication style, the flow of information on coronavirus and the actions taken by civil society, mapping these responses onto the numbers of cases and deaths in the country in question. Our work reveals contrasting responses that reflect a nation’s internal politics, suggesting that a government’s handling of the pandemic was embedded in existing patterns of leadership”.
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organizationdeclaredthat the COVID-19 public health emergency had become a pandemic: 114 countries were affected, there were 121,500 confirmed cases and more than 4,000 people had succumbed to the virus.
One year on, 115 million cases have been confirmed globally and more than 2.5 million deaths from the pandemic.
The report further stated:“We found two major examples of this style of communication working well in practice. South Korea avoided a lockdown due to clearly communicating the threat of COVID-19 as early asJanuary, encouraging the wearing of masks (which were common previously within the nation in response to an earlier Sars epidemic) andquickly rolling outa contact-tracing app.
“Each change in the official alert level, accompanied by new advice regarding social contact, was carefully communicated byJung Eun-Kyung, the head of the country’s Centre for Disease Control, who used changes in her own life to demonstrate how new guidance should work in practice”.
The report also extolled Ghana’s president, Akufo-Addo, saying, “the transparency of this approach was echoed in the communication style of the Ghanaian president, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
“Akufo-Addo took responsibility for coronavirus policy and explained carefully, each measure required, being honest about the challenges the nation faced.Simple demonstrations of empathyearned him acclaim within his nation and also around the world”.
The report found Brazil, the UK and India as “nations that fared less well, encouraged complacency and gave out inconsistent messages about the threat of COVID-19”.