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.