As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, there is an urgent need to maintain the delivery and quality of essential health services. Many national and subnational governments have been actively developing policies, strategies, and guidelines related to the maintenance, adaptation, or discontinuation of health services. PATH, at the request of WHO and with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is rapidly collecting national and subnational policy materials related to the provision of essential health services during COVID-19, with the objectives of describing government responses across health services and over time; comparing government responses to WHO’s operational guidance on maintaining essential health services, and to responses of peer countries; and identifying gaps in responses to help target technical assistance, monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning.

This document reports interim findings of this project as of October 2020. The first version of the Policy Tracker database is publicly available here.