Strengthening government's response to COVID-19 in Indonesia: A modified Delphi study of medical and health academics.

The Indonesian government has issued various policies to control COVID-19. However, COVID-19 new cases continued to increase, and there remain uncertainties as to the future trajectory. We aimed to investigate how medical and health academics view the Indonesian government's handling of COVID-19 and which areas of health systems need to be prioritized to improve the government's response to COVID-19. We conducted a modified Delphi study adapting the COVID-19 assessment scorecard (COVID-SCORE) as the measurement criteria. We invited medical and health academics from ten universities across Indonesia to take part in the two-round Delphi study. In the first round, participants were presented with 20 statements of COVID-SCORE and asked to rate their agreement with each statement using a five-point Likert scale. All participants who completed the first cycle were invited to participate in the second cycle. They had the opportunity to revise their answers based on the previous cycle's results and ranked a list of actions to improve government response. We achieved a moderate consensus level for five statements, a low consensus level for 13 statements and no consensus for two statements. The prioritization suggested that top priorities for improving the government's response to COVID-19 in Indonesia encompass: (1) strengthening capacity to ensure consistent, credible and targeted communication while adopting a more inclusive and empathic communication style to address public concerns; (2) ensuring universal access to reliable COVID-19 testing by expanding lab infrastructure, facilitating operational readiness, and scaling up implementation of proven alternative/complementary tests to RT-PCR; and (3) boosting contact tracing implementation capacity and facilitating contact tracing for all positive cases, involving key stakeholders in further development of the existing contact tracing system (i.e. PeduliLindungi) as well as its evaluation and quality assurance. Ultimately, our study highlights the importance of strengthening health system functions during the pandemic and improving health system resilience for dealing with future public health emergencies.

From concept to action: a united, holistic and One Health approach to respond to the climate change crisis.

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the planet, which is seriously affecting the planetary health including human health. Adapting climate change should not only be a slogan, but requires a united, holistic action and a paradigm shift from crisis response to an ambitious and integrated approach immediately. Recognizing the urgent needs to tackle the risk connection between climate change and One Health, the four key messages and recommendations that with the intent to guide further research and to promote international cooperation to achieve a more climate-resilient world are provided.

Understanding human vulnerability to climate change: A global perspective on index validation for adaptation planning.

Climate change is a severe global threat. Research on climate change and vulnerability to natural hazards has made significant progress over the last decades. Most of the research has been devoted to improving the quality of climate information and hazard data, including exposure to specific phenomena, such as flooding or sea-level rise. Less attention has been given to the assessment of vulnerability and embedded social, economic and historical conditions that foster vulnerability of societies. A number of global vulnerability assessments based on indicators have been developed over the past years. Yet an essential question remains how to validate those assessments at the global scale. This paper examines different options to validate global vulnerability assessments in terms of their internal and external validity, focusing on two global vulnerability indicator systems used in the WorldRiskIndex and the INFORM index. The paper reviews these global index systems as best practices and at the same time presents new analysis and global results that show linkages between the level of vulnerability and disaster outcomes. Both the review and new analysis support each other and help to communicate the validity and the uncertainty of vulnerability assessments. Next to statistical validation methods, we discuss the importance of the appropriate link between indicators, data and the indicandum. We found that mortality per hazard event from floods, drought and storms is 15 times higher for countries ranked as highly vulnerable compared to those classified as low vulnerable. These findings highlight the different starting points of countries in their move towards climate resilient development. Priority should be given not just to those regions that are likely to face more severe climate hazards in the future but also to those confronted with high vulnerability already.

Ignored and invisible: internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the face of COVID-19 pandemic.

COVID-19 is impacting the whole world. The impacts are different on different countries and societal groups, and those who are poor, mobile, and displaced are disproportionally affected. There are different ways that they are affected: they are more vulnerable to contracting the disease while living in shelter, have many barriers to access to social services and health care, difficulty in accessing relief and aid, prone to livelihood loss, and financial insecurity.

An integrated approach to sustainable development, National Resilience, and COVID-19 responses: The case of Japan.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to historic economic fallout. To protect public health and stabilize incomes, governments have implemented massive fiscal stimulus packages. These fiscal supports are crucial, though there is concern that sustainable and resilient development will be sacrificed in the rush to preserve incomes and industries. The aim of the paper is to review whether the Japanese governments' responses in terms of financial stimulus considers longer term resilience and sustainability. This paper reviews pertinent academic literature and publicly available data from governments and organisations. The research is a rapid analysis of emerging information provided by the government of Japan and other international organisations. Using the case of Japan, this paper suggests that it is possible both to protect public health and essential services, while also promoting resilience and sustainability. Japan's integrated solutions show that pandemic response can include accelerated decarbonization and resilient, sustainable development. The paper also warns also that failure to act on long-term sustainability risks increased inequality, higher opportunity costs, cascading hazards, and further retreat from planetary thinking and globalism.

Building resilience against biological hazards and pandemics: COVID-19 and its implications for the Sendai Framework.

2020 has become the year of coping with COVID-19. This year was to be the "super year" for sustainability, a year of strengthening global actions to accelerate the transformations required for achieving the 2030 agenda. We argue that 2020 can and must be a year of both. Thus we call for more utilisation of the health-emergency disaster risk management (Health-EDRM) framework to complement current responses to COVID-19 and the patent risk of similar phenomena in the future. To make our case, we examine current responses to COVID-19 and their implications for the SFDRR. We argue that current mechanisms and strategies for disaster resilience, as outlined in the SFDRR, can enhance responses to epidemics or global pandemics such as COVID-19. In this regard, we make several general and DRR-specific recommendations. These recommendations concern knowledge and science provision in understanding disaster and health-related emergency risks, the extension of disaster risk governance to manage both disaster risks and potential health-emergencies, particularly for humanitarian coordination aspects; and the strengthening of community-level preparedness and response.

Review and analysis of current responses to COVID-19 in Indonesia: Period of January to March 2020.

The world is under pressure from the novel COVID-19 pandemic. Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world and predicted to be affected significantly over a longer time period. Our paper aims to provide detailed reporting and analyses of the present rapid responses to COVID-19, between January and March 2020, in Indonesia. We particularly highlight responses taken by the governments, non-government organisations and the community. We outline gaps and limitations in the responses, based on our rapid analysis of media contents, from government speeches and reports, social and mass media platforms. We present five recommendations toward more rapid, effective, and comprehensive responses.

COVID-19 and ASEAN responses: Comparative policy analysis.

Scholars and policy-makers agree that cross-border and multi-sector cooperation are essential components of coordinated efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 infections. This paper examines the responses of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nation) member countries to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the limits of regional cooperation. ASEAN has pre-existing cooperative frameworks in place, including regional health security measures, which, at least theoretically, could assist the region's efforts to formulate cooperative responses to containing a global pandemic. With its overarching "One Vision, One Identity, One Community", ASEAN cooperation has extended to include region-wide disaster responses, framed as "One Asean, One Response". Using content analysis, this paper examines media statements and policies from ASEAN member states and the ASEAN Secretariat to assess the collective response to COVID-19 during the period from January to August 2020. By identifying gaps and opportunities in government responses to COVID-19 as the virus spread throughout Southeast Asia, this paper provides new insights as well as recommendations for the future.