This paper highlights the strong territorial dimension of the COVID-19 crisis. It has shaken the world, setting in motion waves of change with a wide range of possible trajectories (OECD, 2020). The COVID crisis has massively accelerated some pre-existing trends, in particular digitalisation. The nature of the crisis is unprecedented: beyond the short-term repeated health and economic shocks, the long-term effects on human capital, productivity and behaviour may be long-lasting. A rebound of the epidemic in autumn 2020 is increasing the uncertainty. Many economies will not recover their 2019 output levels until 2022 at the earliest (OECD, 2020). Beyond the health and human tragedy of the coronavirus, it is now widely recognised that the pandemic triggered the most serious economic crisis since World War II.
By spring 2020, more than half of the world’s population had experienced a lockdown with strong containment measures.
It has governments operating in a context of radical uncertainty, and faced with difficult trade-offs given the health, economic and social challenges it raises. In 2020 COVID-19 affected almost all countries and more than 50 million people around the world.
