Table 2.

Summary of government responses to COVID-19 in the study sites, 1 January to 30 May 2020.

Key Control Measures	Geographic Coverage	Common Practice	Variation in Implementation
Administrative
Establishing coordinated governance [13,14,15,30,31,32,33,34]	All but JP	Established at the very early stage of the outbreak, with high-level political leadership and commitment, and multi-sectoral or multi-ministerial coordination.	Governments differ in the timeliness of establishing this coordinated high-level leadership (e.g., HK, TW, SG, and VN did so even before there were ≤5 confirmed cases)
Amending/adding legislations or regulations [14,16,17,18,19,35,36]	CHN, TW, SG, SK and VN	Governments usually add new regulations or pass new acts related to COVID-19 control, and impose severe penalties to violators for enforcement.	New rules differ in legislative nature (Act, Regulations, etc.), regulated thematic areas and enforcement stringency (e.g., SG and SK have issued strict penalty rules for violation).
Transparently sharing epidemiological status [20,22,23,24,25,32]	All	Press conferences were held across the study sites and media tools were used to present timely updates to the public.	Governments differ in the timeliness of establishing these transparent sharing mechanisms. Variations also exist in format and frequency.
Implementing mobility restrictions interventions [26,27,28,29,37,38,39,40]	All	Governments have used their executive power to implement administrative interventions to restrict people’s mobility, including border control, lockdowns, and social distancing. Lockdowns and social distancing were achieved through interventions such as traffic control, non-essential business closures, shelter-in-place policies, in-person school closures, etc.	Study sites differ in the package of interventions implemented and the stringency of their implementation.
Public Health
Aggressive contact tracing aided by digital tools [41,42,43,44]	All but JP	Contact tracing is done through massive and careful epidemiological investigations among close contacts of people who test positive. Given its labor-intensive nature, most countries mobilized human resources and adopted digital tools to assist with the process.	All are similar except for Japan, which uses a different cluster-based approach to trace contacts and did not implement aggressive measures, to protect personal privacy.
Extensive testing [45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52]	All but JP	Governments focused on conducting nucleic acid amplification tests to detect the virus in suspected cases and in close contacts of confirmed cases.	All are similar except for Japan, which had adopted a restrictive testing approach aiming to not overwhelm its healthcare system.
Strict quarantine [48,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61]	All but JP	Quarantine has been implemented among people with infection risk, including close contacts, suspected cases, travelers, and recovered COVID-19 patients.	All are similar except for Japan, in which quarantine policies are comparatively loose and target only travelers.
Mask-wearing (compulsory and voluntary) [43,62,63,64,65,66,67]	All	Both healthy and infected people are encouraged to wear masks in public places.	Compulsory mask-wearing was observed in some study sites from the very beginning (e.g., CHN, VN), while voluntary mask-wearing was observed in others (HK, SK and JP). Some adjusted their policy to make mask-wearing compulsory for all, including for healthy people (SG and TW).
Disinfecting public places [68]	All	Regular and thorough disinfection of public places, especially those with large population mobility and density.	No variations
Widespread temperature screening	All	Wide thermal equipment was set up in public places such as subway entries and airports and manual temperature checks were given to people before entering a residential area or closed building	No variations
Health education/awareness campaigns [45]	All	Health education and awareness campaigns were usually implemented on TV, social media, and phones and in public places, etc.	No variations
Health system
Improving health service delivery [45,62,69,70,71]	All	Governments focused on increasing testing capacity, building new health facilities, increasing the supply of PPE, and improving the triage of patients to improve health service delivery.	Governments differ in the timeliness of initiating these actions, and in the resources utilized for implementation.
Mobilizing the health workforce [45]	CHN, SG, and SK	Human resources for health were mobilized from other regions to support the most heavily affected places.	Study sites differ in the scale of health workforce mobilization and the types of health workers mobilized.
Increasing health financing [24]	All	Effective financing strategies were implemented to cover the majority, if not all, of the testing and treatment costs through health insurance plus special subsidies.	Study sites differ in the costs and population coverage (eg. SK had everything covered).
Enhancing health information systems [45]	CHN	Careful monitoring, review, and timely publication of cases and a strong oversight and accountability mechanism	Data unavailable

CHN = Mainland China; JP = Japan; SG = Singapore; SK = South Korea; TW = Taiwan; VN = Vietnam.