As the world scrambles through the second year of the global pandemic, it has become exceedingly clear that the ‘strongmen’ of the world failed to protect their own people.
China offers tech support. Germany offers oxygen generation plants, Pakistan offers ambulances. Now if New Zealand offers their prime minister, we’ll get through this crisis quickly.
— Jawhar Sircar (@jawharsircar) April 24, 2021
This sarcastic tweet by former CEO of Prasar Bharati Jawhar Sircar not only takes a dig at India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi for failing to manage the Covid crisis but also makes it clear that New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has done such a phenomenal job in handling the pandemic that people go to the extent of envying the island country for having her as its leader.
As the world scrambles through the second year of the global pandemic, trying to get back to the pre-2020 normal, it has become exceedingly clear that the ‘strongmen’ of the world failed to protect their own people. Be it the US’s Trump, Brazil’s Bolsonaro, or India’s Modi, strongmen across the world struggled to manage the once-in-a-century event. While their fellow countrymen died, the strongmen indulged in lies, deceit, and betrayal of the mandate given to them. It was so much so that Donald Trump, who claimed that drinking bleach could help to cure the coronavirus infection, was kicked out of the Presidency by the US citizens.
Meanwhile, as men in positions of power disappointed the masses, the women leaders emerged as a guiding force for many countries. In this article, we discuss two such leaders and how they both managed to contain the pandemic.
Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand
The 40-year-old Prime Minister of the island nation has been hailed and rightly so for the stupendous job she performed as the head of the country. When the world was trailing through the uncertainties and many countries were registering thousands of cases a day in late June 2020, New Zealand had just two cases. Interestingly, until that point, New Zealand had gone 24 days without a single case. These two new cases were linked to quarantine breaches and were enough for the country’s health minister to resign. This speaks volumes of the precautions and carefulness Ardern’s administration expected from its ministers. This also reflects how having even a single case was a matter of great worry for the Ardern administration.
On 2 February 2020, a man in the Philippines became the first person outside China to die of Covid-19.
At this point, there were no reported cases in New Zealand, but the next day, the country began banning entry to any foreigner coming from or via China. Any New Zealander returning from China had to isolate for 14 days.
The flight bans extended to many other countries as cases grew across the world. A few days later, Ms Ardern took the unprecedented step of closing the borders entirely to almost all non-citizens or residents.
“Doing this early on with only over a few thousand cases [worldwide] at the time allowed them to basically stop the influx and stop the community transmission,” Prof Martin Berka, an economist at the country’s Massey University, told the BBC.
When New Zealand went into a national lockdown with only essential services running and everyone told to stay at home, in their “bubble”, it had only 102 cases and zero deaths.
At the peak of the pandemic in the country, New Zealand had 89 cases a day. The time bought by the lockdown was used to finesse an extensive testing and contact tracing operation. Every time a case was confirmed, contact tracers would get to work alerting anyone who had close interactions with the patients, telling them to isolate.
In late March, to prepare the public for a rapidly changing situation, New Zealand introduced a new four-stage alert system. Based on existing wildfire alerts, it would clearly indicate the current risk and the necessary social distancing measures.
On 8 June, Ms Ardern announced that with no new community transmissions in 17 days and all patients fully recovered, “we are confident we have eliminated the transmission of the virus in New Zealand for now”.
Though the country has not yet managed to wipe out the virus completely, it has consistently stayed over the top of the deadly virus infections, keeping the numbers in check.
It was indeed the result of Ms Ardern and her government’s commendable job in the pandemic that her centre-left Labour Party won a landslide victory in New Zealand’s general election held in October 2020.
KK Shailaja, India
KK Shailaja, widely popular in the southern state of India-Kerala as Shailaja ‘teacher’, garnered praises from across the world for her job as Kerala’s health minister.
Although, it was not the first time that the state was fighting with a deadly virus. In 2018, Kerala had to face the Nipah Virus, which was very bravely tackled and the state emerged successfully through it. The state faced the same difficulty 2 years down the line, but now it had prior experience and machinery to fight the virus.
The first and most important thing Kerala did was to inform and educate all the citizens about the coronavirus, for which they used any and every possible mode of communication.
Kerala’s Health Minister KK Shailaja Teacher ensured that there was a daily briefing to the press about the updates on how the government was tackling the virus. It also ensured that the citizens of the state are informed and aware of the situation in the state.
The updates were so efficiently communicated to every person in the state about road maps of places where the infected people have visited, that the citizens who consumed the information isolated themselves and restricted movement in affected areas. Those with symptoms contacted the health authorities.
Not relying on social media too much, the communication path had been set as such that even a villager in the state was informed on the updates by his local leader. By clearing the air around fake news traveling through social media, the Kerala govt. joined hands with the opposition parties to run a campaign on public awareness around hand hygiene and public education.
Travelers, no matter which country they came from, were screened for unusual symptoms and the details of the passengers were noted in case they required to call the passenger at a later stage. People who appeared symptomatic were transported in an ambulance to a district hospital where they would be kept in an isolation ward. Other people, who felt symptomatic, were told to visit the district hospital or local authority.
On the ground, there were health workers, who visited every household to check for symptoms. At the same time, the state government had also recruited and trained health volunteers.
The state started a massive handwashing campaign called ‘break the chain’. Inaugurated by Health Minister Shailaja Teacher, the campaign educated people on the importance of hygiene to protect them and their communities from coronavirus.
KK Shailaja’s work during the first wave of pandemic awarded her the most handsome victory in the assembly polls held in the southern state. She won from the Mattannur constituency in her hometown of Kannur, with a margin of over 60,963 votes.
Why Women Fared Well?
Apart from Jacinda Ardern and KK Shailaja, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina were also hailed for their role in effectively managing the Covid-19 situation.
A study published in the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the World Economic Forum showed countries with women leaders at the helm seem to have handled the coronavirus pandemic significantly better than their male counterparts.
The research paper reasoned that this may be due to “the proactive and coordinated policy responses” adopted by female leaders.
The study revealed that agile policy measures in the initial three months of the pandemic in female-led countries saved nearly two times more lives than those run by male leaders despite having similar numbers of cases.
Moreover, an important facet the study highlighted is the fact that women were less willing to take risks with lives and imposed a nationwide lockdown significantly earlier than male leaders. Concurrently, they were “more willing to take risks in the domain of the economy”.
Supriya Garikipati from the University of Liverpool was one of the scholars who carried out the study.
“Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted more quickly and decisively in the face of potential fatalities,” Ms Garikipati said.
“In almost all cases, they locked down earlier than male leaders in similar circumstances. While this may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries to save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in these countries,” she said.
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