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The COVID-19 pandemic that hit the entire world at the beginning of 2020 has been affecting people and places in both economic and social terms. The indicators presented in this edition of OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance allow a comprehensive assessment of the factors that contribute to making regions and cities prepared and resilient not only to the current crises but also to other megatrends that have an impact on the economy, society and the environment. Overall, this edition presents more than 100 statistical indicators for individual regions and cities, shedding light on disparities and their evolution since the start of the new millennium. For most of the topics analysed, this report covers all OECD member countries and, for a subset of indicators, especially on urbanisation, the scope of the report extends for the first time to the entire world.
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Regions and Cities at a Glance 2020 provides a comprehensive assessment of how regions and cities across the OECD are progressing in their efforts to build stronger, more sustainable and more resilient economies and societies. The publication provides a unique comparative picture in a number of aspects connected to economic development, health, well-being and net zero-carbon transition across regions and cities in OECD and selected non-OECD-member countries. In the light of the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the report analyses outcomes and drivers of social, economic and environmental resilience for regions and cities. More specifically, Chapter 1 reports differences in factors and outcomes to assess how regions are advancing towards resilient societies. The subnational indicators considered in the chapter include excess mortality, hospital beds per capita and air quality, among others.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has generated huge costs in terms of human life and puts our health systems under pressure. Lockdowns and other containment measures to limit the spread of the virus have slowed down entire sectors of activity and turned the health crisis into an economic recession. According to the latest OECD estimates, the second quarter of 2020 saw a fall in GDP by somewhat above 10% in the OECD area compared with the previous quarter and a full recovery to pre-COVID levels is projected to take until 2022.
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The COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most severe crises in a century, has been affecting economies and societies profoundly but also asymmetrically across places. The health impact has been particularly hard in some areas within countries. For example, in some regions of Colombia, Italy and Spain, the number of deaths between February and June 2020 was at least 50% higher than the average over the same period in the 2 previous years. While reminding that places can be very vulnerable to external shocks, the pandemic highlighted that regions and cities need to be prepared to face crises and other important megatrends in the future, such as ageing, climate change and digitalisation.
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