Describe the different technologies that aid to combat pandemics??
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Pandemics leave enormous burdens on our lives, economies, and societies at large. A pandemic is generally defined as a new disease that rapidly spreads in a number of countries and continents. Even a mild pandemic can kill several millions of people (Osterholm, 2005). Over the past hundred years or so, we have seen three deadly pandemics, namely, in 1918, 1957 and 1968 (Mills, Robins, & Lipsitch, 2004). Novel Coronavirus (Covid-19) is the most recent pandemic that has resulted in unprecedented social and economic impact on society. Covid-19 is one of a large group of viruses that was transmitted to humans from bats in a local live animal market in Wuhan in late 2019 (Ji, Wang, Zhao, Zai, & Li, 2020). It infects the upper respiratory tract and can result in pneumonia and other associated illnesses, which can eventually affect the central nervous system, ultimately leading to death for those with underlying health conditions. Given the potential for human-to-human transmission and that inventing a vaccine would ideally take about one or two years, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended that governments worldwide should quickly intensify active surveillance to identify infected individuals to allow rapid isolation and quarantine (Heymann & Shindo, 2020).
Geographically, Covid-19 has had a significant impact on cities. Cities contribute a whopping 80% of the total global GDP and host about half of the global population (The World Bank, 2019). As a result, cities became hubs for the quick transmission of the pandemic. Rapid urbanization, population growth, and increased global travel attributable to globalization have all contributed to this transmission. However, we are fortunate that our current cities are more resilient than ever before. This is due to the increased adoption of smart technologies such as the Internet of things (IoT), big data, and artificial intelligence (AI). Especially cities in China and Western democracies are known for adopting smart city based technologies. For the purpose of this paper, Western democracies include the United States of America (USA), the United Kingdom (UK), Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Spain. These countries were highly affected by Covid-19 in the initial three months after its first transmission.
These cities either adopt a techno- or human-driven approach under the smart city framing (Kummitha & Crutzen, 2017). While the techno-driven approach seeks ubiquitous adoption of smart technologies, largely pushed into cities by using the top-down approach, the human-driven approach encourages cities to educate their citizens and enhance their social and human capital that would help develop and adopt smart technologies necessary in cities (Mora, Bolici, & Deakin, 2017). These new-age technologies have been employed by city governments as part of their initial response strategies.
By the end of the first three months since the virus was identified, while China is able to control its initial outbreak and is up and running again, Western democracies continue to struggle in controlling the virus transmission. For instance, China's response has been described by the WHO-China Joint Mission report as “the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history” (WHO, 2020a, p. 16). Whereas the response from Western democracies was considered inadequate. With this background, the current article reviews academic papers, WHO reports and newspaper articles published in the first three months following the Covid-19 outbreak in China to answer the following research question: How do governments in China and Western democracies differ in their technological response to control the transmission of the pandemic?
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