According to the recent House of Commons report on the UK’s pandemic response, one of the government’s key failings was to assume that the success of countries like South Korea in controlling the virus couldn’t be replicated in Britain. This decision to ignore approaches that were proving successful elsewhere was one of the UK’s biggest oversights early in the pandemic.
However, the report itself falls into a similar trap. It regards South Korea’s pandemic response as exceptional due to its advanced use of digital technology, ignoring the fact that the country also relied a lot on old-fashioned social interventions – contact tracing, quarantine and isolating cases – aided by boots on the ground.
To combat COVID and future pandemics, governments need to heed the lessons of these social interventions and not just the technological ones. South Korea teaches us that high-tech solutions can help protect against disease, but these work together with social interventions – interventions that the UK has not used as effectively.
