In writing this report, our aim was to find out what happened to countries whose governments focussed solely on supporting their citizens’ health over the last two years. Did this help or hinder the long-term economic recovery? And conversely, what happened to countries whose governments focused only on the economic recovery? Did those countries experience greater social harm?
We compared government responses to the Covid-19 crisis in 20 countries over two timeframes, to identify the most effective policies. For the first timeframe, we analysed country performance since the beginning of the pandemic (January 2020 – October 2021). For the second, we analysed how well governments have recovered since the peaks of the crisis in terms of GDP loss (July 2020 – October 2021).