The Committee on Development Effectiveness met to consider the World Bank’s Early Support to Addressing COVID-19: Health and Social Response: An Early-Stage Evaluation and the draft management response.

The committee welcomed IEG’s findings and recommendations and management’s constructive response and echoed their support for the World Bank’s multifaceted and rapid response to the COVID-19 pandemic both in scale and also in quality. Members underscored their appreciation for the unprecedented World Bank’s efforts and innovative work in the first 15 months of the pandemic (February 1, 2020, to April 30, 2021—the period covered by this evaluation) aimed at strengthening health systems, supporting country needs, prioritizing social protection for poor and vulnerable people, and facilitating knowledge sharing with client countries. They highlighted the operational processes and the number of financing instruments and modalities that enabled the rapid response. While recognizing the unprecedented global context, members however noted that the World Bank could have played a more decisive role at the global level, particularly on vaccines, and encouraged management to consider lessons learned from this experience and what could be done differently for a more robust crisis preparedness of the World Bank and client countries.

Members commended management for the innovations adopted in the World Bank’s early response to the pandemic. They asked management to provide initial views on lessons learned including which approaches and tools should be retained and applied more systematically, and how the World Bank can promote continuous innovation in its work. They urged the World Bank to continue collaboration with development organizations and regional partners to coordinate interventions and achieve sustainable crisis response. Members also recognized the timeliness of the evaluation, given ongoing efforts to setup the Financial Intermediary Fund for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response, and also its usefulness in informing discussions with country delegations on pandemic preparedness and crisis response at the 2022 Annual Meetings.