Giving Compass' Take:

• Charles Ries suggests an array of collaborative methods world leaders can employ for an effective response to the global challenge of COVID-19.

• How essential is collaboration in addressing this interconnected crisis? What are you doing to join the fight against the global challenge of COVID-19?

• Learn more about the importance of your giving in the worldwide response to the pandemic.

The G20 met in an extraordinary virtual summit March 26 to discuss the shared global challenge of COVID-19. The communiqué importantly pledged that G20 members would take necessary health measures, expand medical supplies manufacturing capacity, increase research and development funding for vaccines and medicines, and inject over $5 trillion into the global economy.

Consistent with the communiqué provisions, here are five specific commitments and actions G20 countries could take in devising an effective response to an inherently worldwide threat.

First, G20 members could make an ironclad commitment not to impose tariffs or quantitative restrictions on imports of critical goods for fighting the pandemic, such as surgical masks, face shields, disposable gloves and gowns, ventilators, and parts and components for making such products.

Second, and just as importantly, G20 members could make a firm commitment not to impose export restrictions on such key pandemic-related commodities.

But third, recognizing that G20 countries and others will want to take actions to make supplies of personal protective devices available to their citizens, G20 members should legitimize production-enhancing subsidies and other measures governments may wish to take to deal with shortfalls.

Fourth, the longer-term solution for COVID-19 is to develop and deploy a vaccine to provide population immunity against the disease. Many researchers and pharmaceutical companies are working around the clock on a vaccine, and in the next year there may be one or more viable vaccines. G20 countries could anticipate such an outcome and take steps now to prevent international conflict over access to such vaccines and to maximize access to them at an affordable cost.

Fifth and finally, G20 countries could initiate an effort to create a new, chip-enabled, and machine-readable immunization record.

Read the full article about solutions to the global challenge of COVID-19 by Charles P. Ries at RAND Corporation.