Geographies of Covid-19: how space and virus shape each other

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to a geographically-informed preliminary assessment of the diverse and uneven immediate impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, and outlines an agenda for geographical studies of its longer term effects. Intrigued by the apparent tendency of an inverse relationship between a country’s health security capacities and Covid-19 mortalities, the paper explores the significance of a range of geographically situated contextual factors in the realms of the economy, governance and culture as mediators of the public health impacts of Covid-19, and questions how these realms may also be reshaped by this viral pandemic. The paper concludes with reflections on the path dependency and state centrality of pandemic response, and the potential post-pandemic reconfiguration of state-market-society relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• coronavirus disease
• pandemic
• health security
• crisis response

Acknowledgement

We are grateful for the constructive comments received during the peer review process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The research presented in this paper is funded by the Research Sustainability of Major RGC Funding Schemes 2018–19, The Chinese University of Hong Kong [Project number: 3133212].