Editorial | D-Day-like planning for COVID-19

ON D-DAY in 1944, when the Allies begun their campaign to liberate Europe and defeat Hitler’s Germany, they landed 156,000 troops on the beaches of Normandy. Six thousand, nine hundred and thirty-nine vessels, including more than 4,000 landing crafts, were involved in the operation.

Additionally, General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, had more than 12,000 aircraft available to him – including 2,395 transporters and 867 gliders – that were involved in the airborne landings. The American, British, and Canadian air forces flew 14,674 sorties. Millions of tonnes of war material, and other supplies, were ferried across the English Channel to France in support of the invasion.

D-Day represented one of the largest, and most complicated, logistical operations in human history. Its ultimate success wasn’t by chance. By the time the first wave of Allied troops hit the code-named beaches of Omaha, Utah, Gold and Juno on June 6, there had been nearly eight months of strategic, tactical and logistical planning by General Eisenhower, his British counterpart and commander of Allied land forces, Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, and scores of other officers. Troops, too, had been extensively trained for the invasion.

At the apex of the operation, the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, and the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, had to manage their competing aspirations and their different temperaments, and sometimes mercurial personalities of their generals and admirals.

AT WAR

Jamaica, like the Allies three quarter century ago, is at war. It is however fighting an unseen enemy, the coronavirus that has unleashed COVID-19 pandemic. It needs a response, in relative scale, scope and sophistication similar to the planning for D-Day and its aftermath. It’s not our sense that Jamaica’s Government perceives the situation in these terms. Which is not to suggest that it doesn’t see a crisis, or is taking matters lightly; no government could.

After all, more than two and half million people, worldwide, are known to have contracted the disease, although substantially more persons are believed to have been infected by the virus, for which no vaccine or certain antiviral drug has been developed thus far; upwards of 184,000 of the infected persons have died. In Jamaica, up to Wednesday, there were 252 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and six persons had died. Infections are likely to continue on a fast upward spiral as community spread of the virus takes hold.

Around the world, in the absence of a vaccine, and with their health systems overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, governments, to slow its spread, have quarantined whole cities and regions, ordered vulnerable people to stay indoors and placed severe limitations on the number of persons who gather together. Jamaica has adopted some of these measures.

The upshot: internationally, whole sectors have shut down, millions have lost their jobs, and global output is expected to decline by at least three per cent this year. Jamaica, whose vital tourism industry has collapsed, and remittances from its citizens abroad have slowed, could see its gross domestic product shrink by double digits. The situation could be worse, if the Government feels compelled to take more drastic action to contain the virus.

METICULOUS PLANNING

Against this backdrop, meticulous planning, and deep analyses, with multiple stakeholders at the table, is required as the Government seeks to protect the health of the Jamaican people and ensure their economic well-being. This must take into the account the conditions under which large swathes of Jamaicans live, including the nearly one-fifth who are below the poverty line, and the many more who exist on the margins and hustle daily to put food on the table.

By most accounts, the administration has, thus far, done a reasonably good job in responding to the COVID-19. There have also been obvious missteps, such as the crawling, half-hearted conversion to the mandatory wearing of face masks in public and the shambolic roll-out of the lockdown of the parish of St Catherine. Further, the recent two-week closure of the business process outsourcing sector, in response to the failings of one company, rather than moving against bad actors, is a potentially perilous decision for an industry that employs 40,000 people and, for now, is the country’s only foreign exchange earner.

Our suggestion to the administration, expanding on what we have posited before, is that it urgently establishes a group of sectoral task forces – of Government, private sector and civil-society partners – to clinically analyse the state of each sector, what they have in place and what each needs, and can contribute, in a sustainable way, to slow the spread of the virus. These groups should also plan for the inevitable changes in the global political and economic discourse post-COVID-19. Urgency, however, is of the essence – Jamaica doesn’t have the time that General Eisenhower had.