Kathy Leng (HKU)

Lessons from the COVID-19on pandemic preparedness and response in Hong Kong

Global responses to theCOVID-19 pandemic have largely been suboptimal due to significantunderdevelopment of infrastructure, human capital, and analytics in pandemicprevention, preparedness, and response (PPR). In particular, epidemicnowcasting has been universally challenging because it requires distillinginformative or actionable insights from a diverse range of real-world datawhich are often biased. Misinterpretation, misrepresentation, or otherwisemisuse of these nowcasts will fuel infodemics, as we have learned to ourdetriment during the COVID-19 pandemic. I will discuss some lessons learnedfrom COVID-19 and how we can strengthen pandemic PPR in Hong Kong.