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Contact: Eva Grant Center for Global Development egrant@cgdev.org +1.617.412.6540 Webinar on Monday, March 30, to Review Guide and Actions WASHINGTON, DC —Successful suppression of COVID-19 in the United States will require urgent and decisive action by state, local, and community leaders across the country.  To support effective decision-making, top global health security leaders have released a COVID-19 Frontline Guide.  Developed in response to calls from local governments for more information on how to protect their communities, the online tool features eight indicators of progress for self-assessment and seven key actions that each include checklists of decision points. The guide provides a framework to help local leaders establish effective strategies to fight the outbreak, both by reducing transmission of the disease and by supporting their communities effectively.  The website and guide will be discussed with the authors at an online webinar on Monday, March 30 at 12:30 pm ET.  Register here for details on participating.    The contents of the COVID-19 Frontline Guide are grounded in existing guidance from U.S. and global authorities, public health research findings, and lessons observed from countries that have been battling COVID-19 since January 2020. It is intended to complement, but not supplant, guidance from global, federal, and local public health and other authorities. The guide, available at www.COVID-Local.org, is being developed through an iterative process and will be further refined and developed as local leaders share their feedback and experience. The Frontline Guide is a joint project of the Global Biological Policy Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), the Center for Global Development, and the Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security, in collaboration with Talus Analytics.  “Even in prepared cities like Seattle, health systems are struggling to test patients and keep pace with growing caseloads. The specter of rapid community transmission and exponential growth is real and daunting,” said NTI Vice President Dr. Beth Cameron. Key Actions The COVID-19 Frontline Guide highlights seven key actions, representing the proven points of action required by leaders and compiled by experts across the emergency response, health care, public health and health security fields. Each action includes a checklist of decision points: Activate an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and establish a whole-of-community incident management structure Understand the real-time spread of COVID-19 in the community Slow and reduce transmission Focus protection on high-risk groups Reinforce and expand health system surge capacity to sustain healthcare operations and avoid high mortality Expand risk communication and community engagement Mitigate economic and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic Visit www.COVID-Local.org to explore the Frontline Guide for local decision-makers, download the site content, view situation updates on the COVID-19 response capacities, and more. About NTI NTI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan global security organization focused on reducing nuclear and biological threats imperiling humanity. Learn more at www.nti.org or @NTI_WMD on Twitter. About the Center for Global Development The Center for Global Development is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works to reduce global poverty and improve lives through innovative economic research that drives better policy and practice by the world's top decision makers. Learn more at www.cgdev.org or @CGDev on Twitter. About the Georgetown University Center for Global Health Science and Security The Center for Global Health Science and Security (GHSS) at Georgetown University is an academic research center that develops evidence for action, providing decision makers with the tools they need for sustainable capacity building to prevent, detect and respond to public health emergencies. Learn more at ghss.georgetown.edu or at @Georgetown_GHSS on Twitter. CONTACTS: Cathy Gwin (NTI), 202-270-5942, gwin@nti.org Sean Bartlett (CGD) 202-821-2947, sbartlett@cgdev.org Karen Teber (Georgetown), 215-514-9751, km463@georgetown.edu ###

From the article: “…The constant threat of disease, as much as any other factor, kept the reins on human development and expansion. At the dawn of the 19th Century, global life expectancy was just 29 years – not because human beings couldn’t live to much older ages even then, but because so many of us died in infancy from disease, or from infection during childbirth or after a wound.  The cities of the pre-modern era were only able to keep up their populations through a continual infusion of migrants to make up for citizens who died off from disease. The development first of sanitation, and then of countermeasures like vaccines and antibiotics, changed all that. ‘The defeat of infection overcame these barriers and allowed us to have these great global cities,’ says Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank in Washington DC, and the author of the forthcoming book Winning the War on Death: Humanity, Infection and the Fight for the Modern World. It was a victory that won us the modern world as we know it…”

From the article: “…With more countries adopting the measure, the question becomes not if they are effective, but how to make them effective. But data is sparse on best practices in implementing them. ‘No one is doing this very well at this stage,’ said Amanda Glassman, executive vice president and senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. Dr. Kalipso Chalkidou, director of global health policy and also a senior fellow at CGD, said what’s happening globally today serves as a natural experiment. ‘Being able to record exactly what’s happening to the extent we can trust the data and then observe and draw conclusions and dynamically adjust the response, is the key to all of these,’ she said. ’It’s not easy right now to understand exactly what is working best, and we don’t have the single, one recipe for a successful response.’ A major issue with the quarantine in Luzon is the work stoppage and loss of public transportation. Daily wage earners and informal workers won’t have income sources for a month. Without public transportation, some essential workers, such as hospital staff, janitors, and food vendors, are forced to walk as the directive only allows the use of private vehicles. On the first day of implementation of the enhanced community quarantine, reports of health workers and even patients walking for hours to reach the hospital filled the news…”