Disaster preparedness and response in Brazil in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract This article aims to understand how the National System of Protection and Civil Defense functions in response to COVID-19, with emphasis on the work of the Ministry of Health, which is the body responsible for tackling health threats. Three specific objectives were used: the first characterizes COVID-19 as a public health event that can represent a disaster; the second situates the concepts of preparedness and response in the disaster governance literature; the third identifies the jurisprudence and the functioning of disaster management in Brazil. The findings show that, despite the political decision-making tensions, the Brazilian professional bureaucracy managed to guarantee the activation of the disaster governance system related to the preparation and response phases. However, its activation was not enough to allay the crisis. The severity of the pandemic exposed flaws in the phases of disaster prevention and mitigation, as well as the lack of coordinated government response.

摘要 本文旨在探究国家保护与民防系统应对新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）的运作机制，重点聚焦负责应对健康威胁的主管机构——卫生部的相关工作。本文设定了三项具体研究目标：其一，将COVID-19定性为可构成灾害的公共卫生事件；其二，梳理灾害治理文献中关于备灾与应急响应的核心概念；其三，厘清巴西灾害管理的判例体系与运作模式。研究结果表明，尽管存在政治决策层面的紧张态势，巴西职业官僚体系仍成功启动了与备灾及响应阶段相关的灾害治理系统。然而，该系统的启动并不足以缓解此次危机。此次大流行的严峻性暴露了灾害预防与减灾阶段存在的诸多缺陷，同时也凸显出政府应急响应缺乏协调性的问题。