Transition from social vulnerability to resiliency vis-à-vis COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed systemic deficiencies in preparing and planning for disasters, with profound health, economic, social, political, and humanitarian consequences. When preparing for pandemics, social vulnerability needs to be assessed using vulnerability indices to identify which populations are at greater risk. In this context, we examined the possible association of social vulnerabilities in U.S. cities with COVID-19 case fatality ratios. Post-pandemic return to normalcy is fraught with uncertainty over the ability of different communities to recover with varying degrees of resilience. Towards this, we recommend use of a community resiliency planning framework, along with modeling and evaluation of the required measures, which may be useful for the Indian scenario.