July 24, 2020

SEOUL – WeGO continued its webinar series focused on presenting regional cases of best practice of COVID-19 response, as part of the Smart Health Responder—its new initiative aiming at supporting members, partners and stakeholders in their fight against the pandemic.

This time focused on the readiness and responses of cities in the Americas, the session highlighted the steps, policies and solutions cities are now implementing to enable economies and public services to restart, and citizens to go back to their normal life.

The Mayor of Lima, the Secretary of La Plata, the Director of Quebec Government Office in Seoul gave a few opening remarks to express their support for WeGO’s initiative, and briefly share the situation in their cities and the measures that they have taken to cope with the situation of ‘new normality’.

For Latin America, the Digital Agency for Public Innovation of Mexico City gave a detailed explanation on how it uses an epidemiological model and other ICT solutions to detect and predict the number of cases, channel citizens through the health system, and determine the easing of restrictions. In São Paulo, the public innovation lab (011).lab uses different experiments to come up evidence-based policy and innovative ways to improve public services in the context of COVID-19.

For North America, the New York City Economic Development Corporation described how it is planning to introduce measures to increase economic flexibility and resiliency while fostering collaboration and reducing inequalities to cope with post-pandemic challenges. In Portland, the local government has focused greatly on helping communities affected by the digital divide with assistance to access education, healthcare and other key social services online through relevant community partners.

Although not able to present because of technical issues, WeavAir—a corporate member of WeGO based in Canada—was also scheduled to introduce its air filtration solution to reduce building contamination and avoid new waves of infection.

The final webinar in this series is slated for October, and will focus on the regions of Europe and Africa through real-life stories of citizens showcasing the new and innovative ways they are maintaining health and going about their daily lives.

Watch the full recording of the webinar here and download the presentation slides here.