Weaving public health and safety nets to respond the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT

How do governments take strategic actions in weaving public health and safety nets to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic? Embracing Moore's strategic action framework, this study investigates how municipal governments can configure authorizing environment-operational capacity-public value attributes to weave public health and safety nets, in order to prevent and control the public health and safety emergency. Leveraging fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) with a sample of 323 Chinese cities, we identify a distinctive taxonomy of four equally effective configurations of urban actions in blocking COVID-19 transmission social reassurance, proactive defence, decisive resiliency, and strengthened coercion. Overall, this study provides a novel insight of public health and safety management into battles against COVID-19 in human society.