Page 20 - Conducting Elections during COVID-19

2 INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES OF CONDUCTING ELECTIONS DURING COVID-19

the WHO regarding an outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan City, which was later classified as COVID-19.
On 30th January 2020, WHO declared the outbreak of COVID-19 a “Public Health Emergency of
International Concern” (PHEIC). Based on the initial evidence, the main symptoms of COVID-19 are
cough, high temperature and, in severe cases, shortness of breath. People with COVID-19 may also
develop complications severe enough to require hospital care, most often pneumonia; the illness may
be severe enough to lead to death.
Real Danger: Highly Infectious

What is more important and feared about COVID-19 is its severity, and an extremely fast infection
rate among populations. Primarily the virus spreads through small droplets emanating from coughing,
sneezing, and talking or in other words through exhaling. The droplets usually fall to the ground or onto
nearby surfaces rather than travelling through long distances in air. Therefore, persons standing in
close proximity of an infected individual may inhale these droplets and get infected. People may also
become infected by touching a contaminated surface and then touching their face. The transmission
may also occur via smaller droplets suspended in air for longer periods of time in enclosed spaces
especially following certain medical procedures. The virus is most contagious during the first three
days after the onset of symptoms, although spread is possible before symptoms appear, and from
asymptomatic people who do not show any symptoms. The standard method of diagnosis is by real-
time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) from a nasopharyngeal swab.

How long does the Virus survive on different surfaces?

A proper appreciation virus survival period is vital to understanding how contagious it could be. A paper
published in the New England Journal of Medicine came out with new information on longevity of the
survival of virus on different surfaces.
Continued global research has been providing more facts on the subject on a fast pace. The scope of
the brief mention as above is introductory in nature. More details can be worked out from literature on
the subject.
Fundamental Social and Preventive Measures for containing COVID-19

Preventive and safety measures for common man are built around fundamental points essentially
comprised of effective social distancing, avoiding person-to-person physical contact, frequent
sanitisation, disinfection, wearing masks, gloves and use of person protection equipment .

We will see more of this in application as an integral part of safety protocols of the Governments and
the COVID-19 safe elections of different Election Management Bodies (EMBs) across the world.
Response to Safeguard Public Health

Faced with a threat of epic scale, different countries have launched programmes for augmentation of
COVID-19 specific massive healthcare facilities on one hand and adopted radical and unprecedented
restrictive measures to counter the spread of the corona virus pandemic on the other. Strict ‘lockdown’
confinement orders with the exception of essential activities have been notified under legislative
and legal instruments and enforced for long durations. This has further enhanced the complexity
of the challenges through the disruption of normal socio-economic and socio-political activities.
Economies in every sector face serious challenges. With the slow and gradual containment of the
pandemic, ‘lockdowns’ are being gradually eased out in phases. Governments are announcing recovery
packages that envisage massive government spending and reliance on debt. Recovery is slow and
full of impediments. International cooperation is underway to produce and distribute treatments and
vaccines.

Impact on Electoral Democracy
The democratic governance model has long been under stress from the social media, fake news,
information technology driven challenges that influence elections besides external geopolitical
threats from resilient authoritarian actors. But COVID-19 has created a new kind of stress test, bringing
into question globalisation, democratic decision making, the reliability of science and information, and
ultimately the ability of the democratic model to cope with disaster management.

The COVID-19 pandemic, as such, has presented politicians and election management bodies (EMBs)
around the world with challenging and complex options. The Pandemic and its impact have posed
unprecedented challenges to the elections across the world in the year 2020 in terms of logistics, costs,