A mere month before the first case of COVID-19 was reported in Wuhan, China, the tiny Asian kingdom of Bhutan (population 775,000) was already working with the World Health Organization (WHO) to simulate what a national response to a global pandemic could potentially look like.

Participants from all sectors — including armed forces, police, civil aviation, customs and food safety authorities, flight crews, health officials, and a national service volunteer group called Desuung — brainstormed and acted out what their role would be in the scenario of a passenger arriving from abroad with a suspected case of a hypothetical coronavirus disease. The exercise allowed participants to pinpoint existing weaknesses and areas of improvement in case of a real pandemic.

According to WHO and Bhutan officials, this early simulation largely contributed to the country’s success in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic — with zero deaths, zero infections among health workers, fewer than 500 total cases, and a high patient recovery — despite being nestled between China, where the virus originated, and India, which has one of the highest number of cases in the world.

With WHO’s support, Bhutan acted early to implement core public health measures to detect, test, trace, isolate, and treat cases. The country also worked to scale up the capacity of health care workers, hospitals, laboratories, and ensuring that the delivery of essential health services would not be affected even during a lockdown.

Read the full article about preparing for pandemics by Sarah Alaoui at United Nations Foundation.