A free online tool to track and compare policy responses of governments tackling the coronavirus outbreak around the world has been launched by the Blavatnik School of Government.
The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker monitors information from 73 countries, including China, South Korea, Italy, UK and USA. Blavatnik, part of Oxford University, will update the tracker continuously.
The publicly available information is being collected by a team of academics and students who will record and aggregate scores into a ‘Stringency Index’.
The index focuses on 11 indicators including school closures, public events cancellations and public information campaigns, plus fiscal and monetary measures and emergency investment in healthcare.
The Blavatnik’s associate professor of Global Public Policy and project lead Thomas Hale said he hopes the index will be useful for researchers, policymakers and citizens.