Journal of Risk Research

ISSN: 1366-9877 (Print) 1466-4461 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjrr20

COVID-19 risk governance: drivers, responses and

lessons to be learned

Aengus Collins, Marie-Valentine Florin & Ortwin Renn

To cite this article: Aengus Collins, Marie-Valentine Florin & Ortwin Renn (2020): COVID-19
risk governance: drivers, responses and lessons to be learned, Journal of Risk Research, DOI:
10.1080/13669877.2020.1760332

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2020.1760332

Published online: 25 May 2020.

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JOURNAL OF RISK RESEARCH
https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2020.1760332

COVID-19 risk governance: drivers, responses and lessons to

be learned
Aengus Collinsa, Marie-Valentine Florina and Ortwin Rennb
a
EPFL International Risk Governance Center (IRGC), Lausanne, Switzerland; bInstitute for Advanced
Sustainability Studies (IASS), Potsdam, Germany

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The COVID-19 outbreak was neither unpredictable nor unforeseen, yet it Received 20 April 2020
blind-sided policymakers when it emerged, leading to unprecedented Accepted 21 April 2020
global restrictions on human activity and almost certainly triggering the
KEYWORDS
first global economic contraction since WWII. This paper considers the
Corona crisis; IRGC risk
key factors in the eruption of the crisis, as well as the lessons that governance framework;
should be learned from it. The paper begins with an outline of COVID- lessons for risk governance
19’s spread, highlighting six key drivers that have determined its sever-
ity: the exponential pace of transmission, global interconnectedness,
health-sector capacity, wider state capacity, the economic impact of
suppression measures, and fragilities caused by the 2008 financial crisis.
The paper then proceeds by considering the steps that have been taken
in response to five key challenges, corresponding to elements of the
IRGC risk governance framework: technical assessment, risk perception,
evaluation, management and communication. While acknowledging
that only tentative conclusions can be drawn at this early stage, the
paper ends with a series of ten recommendations designed to increase
preparedness for future crises.

The COVID-19 outbreak was neither unpredictable nor unforeseen (Sansonetti 2020).1 Many
organisations warned about the vulnerability of our increasingly tightly interconnected world to
the spread of infectious diseases (Cabinet Office 2017; Global Preparedness Monitoring Board
2019). Reservoirs of coronaviruses in animal populations have long been identified as a problem
(W. Li et al. 2005). So too have the ‘wet markets’ which appear once again to have been respon-
sible for zoonotic transmission in the case of COVID-19 (Webster 2004). The nexus of animals,
humans and pathogens has been recognised as a ‘time bomb’ waiting to go off (Cheng et al.
2007). Despite this, a sense of complacency about pandemic risks has prevailed among policy-
makers, perhaps because of the comparatively low death tolls and the limited geographic spread
of recent outbreaks (SARS and MERS).
As the COVID-19 crisis erupted, policymakers were blind-sided by the disease’s combination
of SARS-like severe lower-respiratory impacts with the transmissibility of common-cold coronavi-
ruses (Kormann 2020). The result has been a dramatic spread across the world, aided by failures
or delays at key junctures. The first four cases were officially reported in Wuhan on 29 December
2019 (Q. Li et al. 2020). By mid-April 2020 there were more than 2 million confirmed cases and
almost 150,000 deaths globally, despite the introduction of unprecedented restrictions on human

CONTACT Ortwin Renn [email protected] Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS), Berliner
Str. 130, 14467 Potsdam, Germany.
ß 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 A. COLLINS ET AL.

travel and interaction (Hale and Webster 2020). Modelling published by Imperial College London
in March 2020 suggested that in the absence of policy measures, COVID-19 would have spread
to infect 7 billion and kill 40 million people globally (Walker et al. 2020). Such figures may
appear to be on the high side given that stringent restrictions have led to a fall in new infections
in countries including Italy, Spain, Germany and France are in decline. However, developments in
several other countries, in particular the US, remain unclear, and in all countries sustainable suc-
cess depends on the continuing effectiveness of confinement measures. On top of its direct
health impacts, COVID-19 has caused immediate and severe economic damage; it is set to trigger
the first contraction of global GDP since World War II (Economist Intelligence Unit 2020). The lon-
ger-term economic impacts are unclear, but a recent study of 12 major historical pandemics
argues that the adverse economic consequences of pandemics last for about 40 years and greatly
exceed those of wars (Jorda, Singh, and Taylor 2020). Again, given the severe measures that are
now in place, the economic repercussions may not be as severe as in previous pandemics.

Drivers of the crisis

A number of factors have played a particularly important role in the rapid escalation of the crisis
since the start of the year:

i. The pace of the disease’s spread has been a critical consideration. As the Imperial College
model mentioned above highlights, in the absence of mitigation measures, exponential
propagation can swiftly engulf almost the entire population of the world. This requires poli-
cymakers to act—and to collaborate internationally—extremely swiftly. Those countries with
preparedness plans in place have enjoyed a significant advantage, including countries with
recent experience from SARS and other outbreaks.
ii. The basic reproduction number (R0) of a virus is partly a reflection of its inherent properties
of transmissibility, but it also reflects the degree of contact between people (Jackson 2019).
A second factor in the spread of COVID-19 has therefore been the deepening of global
interconnectedness in recent decades (not least because of the integration of China into
the world economy). The biggest outbreak hotspots have been close to major airport hubs,
and air travel is the paradigmatic example of increasing global network densities: between
2000 and 2018 the number of air passengers each year increased from 1.7 billion to 4.2 bil-
lion (World Bank 2020).
iii. A third factor in shaping the scale of the current crisis has been health-sector capacity.
Like flood defences threatened by a tsunami, the exponential growth in confirmed cases of
COVID-19 has threatened to overwhelm limited supplies of critical healthcare resources,
including hospital beds, personal protective equipment (PPE), testing materials, medication,
ventilators and specialist personnel. Constraints in the health sector have been exacerbated
by efforts to boost short-term operational and financial efficiency, to the detriment of
investments that would have bolstered the long-term resilience of the sector.
iv. A fourth factor to consider is the role of state capacity more generally in responses to the
spread of the virus. A proper assessment will not be possible for many months until relative
performances can be judged, but particular concerns have already been raised about state
capacity in weaker, poorer countries in sub-Saharan Africa if caseloads begin to mount in
that region (Nordling 2020). It should also be noted, however, that the erosion of state cap-
acity (albeit from a much higher base) has also been cited to explain the vast variability in
mortality in advanced Western countries (Smith 2020).
v. A further driver has been the immediacy with which risk has cascaded from the health sys-
tem to the economy. This is for obvious reasons. Suppression of the outbreak has focussed
on measures (distancing, quarantine, isolation, etc) that lead inexorably to an immediate
 JOURNAL OF RISK RESEARCH 3

slowdown in economic activity. In the US, for example, the weekly number of new
unemployment claims was around ten times higher than had ever previously been recorded
(US Department of Labor 2020).
vi. Finally, the COVID-19 crisis has emerged at a time when the political, economic and societal
fragilities produced by the 2008 financial crisis are still being felt in many countries and
regions. It is notable that in some countries patterns of societal polarisation and fragmenta-
tion appear to be shaping attitudes and responses to COVID-19 (Coppins 2020). In some
countries, the financial crisis has also contributed directly to healthcare and other capacity
constraints, as a result of the austerity measures taken over the past decade (Portes 2020).

Responses to the crisis

In this section, we focus on five key elements in the developing response to the COVID-19 out-
break: scientific assessment, risk perception, evaluation, management and communication. These
are drawn from the IRGC risk governance framework (Florin and Bu €rkler 2017).

Technical assessment
The technical assessment of COVID-19 hazards, exposures and vulnerabilities does not start from
scratch, but builds on a large body of evidence and analysis relating to previous coronaviruses
(Paules, Marston, and Fauci 2020). The full genetic sequence of the virus was available globally
within just ten days of the first WHO alert (National Center for Biotechnology Information 2020).
The pace of scientific research into the virus since then has continued at breakneck speed and
medical preprint servers have been flooded with research. Important early policy-relevant discov-
eries include the significant level of asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2, information that
has shaped epidemiological models and management strategies (Ma et al. 2020). There have
been blind spots, however. Early evidence from Taiwan about human-to-human transmission
was reportedly disregarded by the WHO because of political considerations (Financial
Times 2020).
Despite the pace of research, significant scientific uncertainties remain about COVID-19. It is
still unclear how many people are infected or have recovered. It is even unclear how many peo-
ple have died of the disease—testing and reporting standards differ and evolve, and there may
be deliberate mis-reporting. Other uncertainties include whether infection confers immunity
(Branswell 2020), and how the virus might be affected as weather patterns change over the
course of the year. As with previous infectious disease outbreaks, a comprehensive scientific
assessment will only be possible retrospectively. This creates obstacles to designing and imple-
menting optimal risk management strategies. So too does the even greater difficulty of assessing
accurately any second- and third-order effects of the outbreak on the economy, society, domes-
tic politics, international relations and so on (Baldwin and di Mauro 2020).

Risk perceptions
Assessing risk perceptions complements the scientific assessment by taking account of individual
and societal opinions, concerns and preferences. Risk perceptions play an important role in shap-
ing individual protective behaviours, which is of particular importance in a case like COVID-19,
where protective behaviours are at the heart of most response strategies (van der Pligt 1996).
Moreover, a number of factors may skew perceptions of COVID-19, including cognitive biases
(Fisher 2020)2, anxiety (American Psychological Association 2020; Rubin et al. 2009), the unintui-
tive nature of exponential growth (Wagenaar and Sagaria 1975), experience of previous out-
breaks, and indications that individuals pay more attention to media timelines of pandemics
4 A. COLLINS ET AL.

than to the underlying epidemiological timelines (Reintjes et al. 2016). Conflicting values among
both policymakers and the public are another important factor in risk perceptions—for example
over the balancing of health and economic impacts, or the level of isolation that it is appropriate
for the state to enforce. It is still very early to draw firm empirical conclusions about perceptions
of this particular disease and responses to it. Research is under way, however, and preliminary
results point to marked variation between countries on dimensions such as trust in governments’
ability to protect citizens, and the specific behavioural changes that individuals have made
(International Survey on Coronavirus 2020).

Evaluation
A key task facing decision-makers is the evaluation of risks to determine whether they are (i)
acceptable without any mitigation measures, (ii) intolerable no matter what precautions are
taken, or (iii) tolerable if risk reduction measures are taken (Florin and Bu €rkler 2017, 20). This
judgement should be grounded in the results of the scientific assessment and the perception
assessment (as well as wider considerations such as societal values, resource constraints and
trade-offs). In the case of COVID-19 there have been instances—including in the US—where this
process has broken down and policy-makers’ evaluation of the risk has been at odds with the
scientific consensus. However, the vast majority of countries have imposed stringent risk reduc-
tion measures, while tolerating significant residual risk rather than curtail civil liberties too com-
pletely or for too long. According to the available data, China appears to have evaluated the risk
of the disease spreading as being closer to intolerable, taking comprehensive and intrusive steps
to suppress the Wuhan outbreak and prevent it from spreading to the rest of the country. At the
other end of the spectrum, a small number of countries appear at times to have been willing to
accept a much greater degree of COVID-19 risk, foregoing widely implemented suppression
measures in order to allow the infection to spread, seemingly in the hope that herd immunity
could be achieved. In the case of the UK, this evaluation appears to have rested on an under-
estimation of the number of deaths that such a strategy would entail (Horton 2020). When the
potential for 250,000 deaths was highlighted in another Imperial College modelling paper
(Ferguson et al. 2020) the government swiftly changed course. Another crucial issue is the trust
of governments in voluntary or enforced measures for self-protection. Sweden has been pioneer-
ing an approach of relying on voluntary compliance while most other countries promulgated
legally enforced measures to assure compliance.

Risk management
Risk management begins with taking decisions about the measures needed to deal with risks
evaluated as tolerable. It involves designing, selecting and implementing strategies to reduce the
adverse consequences associated with the risk (Florin and Bu €rkler 2017, 23). The decisions taken
after appropriate evaluation are instrumental in determining how much harm a risk will ultim-
ately cause. In the context of the current outbreak, the pace of the infection’s spread has been a
key constraint in the decision-making process, forcing policymakers to decide on unprecedented
mass restrictions at great speed, under ongoing uncertainty and in the knowledge that the cost
of failure (or even delayed success) could be very high numbers of deaths. Despite the complex-
ity and uncertainty of the epidemiology, strong scientific consensus has resulted in a high
degree of agreement among policymakers on the kind of measures needed to suppress it (Hale
and Webster 2020). This emerging policy consensus was strengthened as increasing data became
available from the earliest-affected countries, notably China and Italy (Phull 2020). Timing has
therefore emerged as a key differentiator between responses in different countries. Thus far, two
delays in particular have played an important role in determining the trajectory and scale of the
 JOURNAL OF RISK RESEARCH 5

global outbreak: an initial three-week delay in China after the first cases were seen, and a later
delay in suppressing the virus in the United States (Shear et al. 2020). A further source of vari-
ation in the way countries have managed COVID-19 has been the healthcare capacity constraints
mentioned earlier. For example, a lack of key materials in some Western countries has hampered
their adoption of large-scale testing strategies that appear to have been successful when
deployed elsewhere, notably in South Korea. Furthermore, there is an ongoing debate about the
extent to which civil rights can be compromised in order to reduce the health risks. While South
Korea reported to have success with a tracing app that would warn people if a positive tested
person would come near to them, most European countries felt that such an app would not be
compatible with the existing civil rights legislation unless it could be entirely anonymized.
Hence, policymakers are forced to decide on further measures to manage risk-risk trade-offs—
the additional risks created or exacerbated by the measures taken to manage COVID-19. In par-
ticular, huge financial commitments have been made to mitigate the potential economic harm
caused by the steps taken to suppress the outbreak (IMF 2020). It is too early to judge either the
cost or the effectiveness of the management strategies that policymakers are pursuing. It is also
too early to judge what unintended consequences these strategies might lead to. In light of the
scientific evidence about COVID-19, policymakers have had little choice but to intervene rapidly
and forcefully in multiple interconnected complex systems (healthcare, economy, society, global
transport, etc). It should not come as a surprise if these interventions trigger further spill-overs,
including potential nonlinear effects.3

Communication
By risk communication we mean the process of sharing risk-related information within and
between different groups, such as scientists, policymakers and the public, both nationally and
€rkler 2017, 27), particularly
internationally. It is crucial for effective risk governance (Florin and Bu
in the context of a crisis as far-reaching as COVID-19 (Boin and Lodge 2020). The transparent
communication of reliable scientific data among scientists is central to reducing uncertainty and
facilitating robust risk assessments. The effective communication between scientists and policy-
makers is key to the formulation (and modification where necessary) of evidence-based manage-
ment strategies. And clear channels for communication between policymakers and the public are
needed in order to ensure the legitimacy and durability of management strategies as disruptive
and sustained as those that are currently being implemented. A large body of research has
established clear guiding principles for communicating about risk (Renn 2010). However, COVID-
19 has presented policymakers in particular with numerous communication challenges related to
crisis communication: how to communicate the severity of the risk (particularly given the com-
bination of exponential dynamics and asymptomatic transmission); how to instil urgency without
creating panic or despair; how to acknowledge uncertainty across multiple dimensions of the
risk governance process;4 and how to maintain confidence if changes in management strategies
are required.
Compounding all of these challenges is the need to communicate consistent messages to
very different audiences. Very broadly speaking, people’s responses to crisis can be grouped into
three categories: freeze, flight and fight (Bracha 2004, 679). Each of these patterns require differ-
ent forms of communication. The freeze cluster requires clear incentives to make people more
alert to the risks they are facing. The flight cluster needs to be informed that even within isola-
tion there are risks that will need to be addressed—for example, health risks such as dehydration
or social risks such as isolation. Finally, the fight cluster requires good advice on how to channel
their need for action into behavioural responses that reduce the risk to themselves and others
(such as helping the elderly to get food), while avoiding the scapegoating of individuals who are
alleged to be causing or amplifying the risk (Renn 2015). Methods of communicating effectively
6 A. COLLINS ET AL.

with one of these groups may not work (or may be actively counter-productive) for the other
two. Therefore, it is crucial to design consistent but also audience-specific risk and crisis commu-
nication programmes.
Where there have been failures of risk-related communication in relation to COVID-19 they
have been costly. The two important risk management delays noted above, in China and the US,
both involved failures of communication. In the Chinese case, early risk-related information was
actively supressed, notably in the case of Dr Li Wenliang who had warned colleagues about
COVID-19 (Green 2020). In the US case, damaging delays flowed from key policymakers’ disre-
gard for scientific advice until it was too late to contain the outbreak. Another area of missing or
confused guidance has been in relation to the benefits or otherwise of members of the public
wearing masks when they are outdoors (Tufekci 2020).

Lessons to be learned from the crisis

It is far too early to be definitive about the lessons that should be learned from the COVID-19
outbreak. However, tentative conclusions can be drawn as fresh evidence about this crisis accu-
mulates. Previous crises suggest that COVID-19 may open a ‘window of opportunity’ during
which otherwise infeasible changes might be tabled, agreed and implemented. Notwithstanding
the fact that the crisis response is ongoing, now is also the time to assess what the priorities
should be.

1. Deal with similar risks at source. It remains the case that bats and other animals are a
reservoir of potential infectious diseases. To prevent further outbreaks, opportunities for
zoonotic transmission will need to be reduced. Among other things, this would seem to
require steps to shut down transmission via the ‘wet markets’ that have been responsible
for both the SARS and COVID-19 outbreaks.
2. Act on warnings. A global infectious disease outbreak was predicted but not adequately
prepared for. One obvious lesson is to review national and international risk assessments
(or conduct new ones) and put better protections in place for high-impact risks that have
been warned about. In the wake of COVID-19 there will be a temptation to focus dispro-
portionate resources on strengthening pandemic preparedness. While remedying key defi-
ciencies in this area will be important, the next shocks are likely to come from other
directions. What other risk warnings have not received the attention they deserve?
3. Pay attention to risk-risk trade-offs. Whatever steps are taken to reduce the risks of
COVID-19 are likely to have unexpected consequences. With high-stakes decisions currently
being taken at speed and under conditions of uncertainty, there is a danger of these con-
sequences being overlooked. As far as possible, build these second-round effects into
assessments, evaluations and management strategy decisions.
4. Consider the role of technology. How can powerful computing technologies be safely
used to predict, identify and help respond to infectious disease outbreaks and other emer-
gencies? This is the first ‘smartphone pandemic’. How can phones be used for contact trac-
ing, while protecting privacy (Troncoso et al. 2020)? Similarly, what more can be safely
done to leverage machine learning and other technologies as tools for pandemic assess-
ment, preparedness and response (Hao 2020)?
5. Invest in resilience. Great gains in organisational efficiency over recent decades have
resulted in a lack of resilience in some critical systems, such as healthcare. Investing in
resilience needs to focus on three elements: redundancy, diversity and adaptive manage-
ment (Linkov et al. 2014). We have seen the spread of COVID-19 exacerbated by supply-
chain blockages (for example, for protective clothing and face masks, 80% of which is man-
ufactured in China). Similarly, relying on only one line of products or services can lead to
 JOURNAL OF RISK RESEARCH 7

collapse if no alternatives are readily available. And being trapped in rigid managerial struc-
tures, institutional silos and administrative rules can make the situation much worse than if
a flexible and system-oriented approach is in place.
6. Focus on key nodes in the system. As noted above, the rapid growth of air travel is a
key enabler of the global transmission of infectious diseases (Epstein et al. 2007). Future
preparedness efforts should reflect this. Sharply restricting air travel as early as possible is
an important way of slowing or halting the spread of an outbreak. To facilitate this kind of
rapid disruption, a global emergency fund could be established to provide immediate com-
pensation to affected parties, such as airlines and airport operators.
7. Strengthen the science-policy nexus. In many cases during this outbreak, the transmis-
sion of information and advice from the scientific assessment to policymakers’ decisions
about risk evaluation, management and communication has worked well. However, in the
context of an exponentially spreading disease, when policymakers have ignored scientific
advice, or delayed acting upon it, the human costs have been high. Every country should
review the effectiveness of its current model of science-policy integration in light of
COVID-19 experiences, and international bottlenecks should also be assessed.
8. Build state capacity. Two global systemic risks have crystallised since 2007—dealing with
such risks perhaps needs to be considered an ongoing part of normal government rather
than a periodic emergency response function. The aftermath of the upheaval caused by
COVID-19 may offer an important opportunity for institutional and regulatory change to
strengthen future responses.(Balleisen et al. 2017) Where public money is being used to
bolster the economy, it should have conditions attached that seek to reduce the likelihood
of future crises emerging. These conditions might involve the kind of resilience-boosting
measures mentioned above (recommendation 3) or steps to tackle climate change or
enhance sustainable practices (Hsu, Chia, and Vasoo 2020).
9. Communicate better. The pace of the COVID-19 crisis has required management strategies
to be chosen and implemented without the time for careful engagement with the public.
The communication part of the response to COVID-19 has been slow and/or flawed in a
number of countries. One solution for this would be to establish national and international
risk information and communication units tasked responding as soon as a potential crisis
arises.5 To address the point raised earlier about communicating to groups with very differ-
ent risk responses (freeze, flight, fight), centralised crisis communications should be com-
plemented by decentralised hotlines and similar services, with staff trained to recognise
the different groups and communicate accordingly.
10. Reflect on current societal disruptions. The COVID-19 crisis is forcing a large number of
people and organisations to experiment with new patterns of living and working, involving
among other things: less consumption, less traffic, more time spent with family, less time
spent with colleagues and employers, greater reliance on virtual communication (Wise
et al. 2020). If the crisis persists, preferences may begin to shift, leading to some of these
changes becoming entrenched. Now is the time to consider which changes might be desir-
able over the long-term (for example, because they accelerate changes that climate change
is likely to require in any case), and which changes should be resisted (for example,
because they involve a deleterious reduction in social interaction and individual well-being.

Notes
1. This paper draws on a recent document from the EPFL International Risk Governance Center. See Collins (2020)
2. Perception research has been able to prove many biases that can lead either to overestimation or
underestimation of risks. For example, risks are overestimated when the potential consequences are illustrated
in a particularly drastic way (such as television images of overcrowded hospitals or morgues). Another pattern
revealed by research is that threats that can be statistically characterized by a bell-curve distribution of health
8 A. COLLINS ET AL.

effects per triggering event tend to polarize reactions. On the one hand, there are those who self-locate on the
left of the curve (“There’s no way it will get me!”). On the other, there are those who self-locate on the right
(“I’m so unlucky, someone is certain to infect me!”). Communicating simultaneously to these two groups is
extremely difficult. See Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (2019).
3. Hungary’s indefinite suspension of elections is an example of a nonlinear social/political effect of COVID-19.
The collapse of oil prices (now cheaper than supermarket water) and the near-total grounding of many airlines
are examples of non-linear business and economic impacts, which in turn may cause further spillover effects.
4. Uncertainties must be communicated because silence about them can undermine credibility. However,
incautious communication of uncertainties can lead to fear and exaggerated negative risk perceptions. For this
reason, the imperatives are to (i) communicate uncertainties as precisely as possible, and (ii) make clear what
steps are being taken to reduce the degree of uncertainty. See Han (2013).
5. For principles of clear risk communication, see Environmental Protection Agency (1988).

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the following individuals for their insightful comments on an earlier version of this
article: Gerard Escher (EPFL), James Larus (EPFL), Granger Morgan (Carnegie Mellon University and IRGC
Foundation), Arthur Petersen (University College London), Stephan Schreckenberg (Swiss Re).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Marie-Valentine Florin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2263-3928

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