evidence: Financing approaches are foundational to planning a national response to covid-19 and putting it into operation. Many countries allocated additional funds to subnational governments, health ministries, or hospitals to support the overall response (see supplementary table 1; bmj.com). Other countries focused on direct procurement of high cost medical equipment, personal protective equipment, and medication. Countries also reallocated funds from other sectors or borrowed from international financing organisations, such as the Asian Development Bank, to rapidly procure medical equipment and medication. Funds were also channelled to the private healthcare sector through contracting essential pandemic related services, such as testing and hospital level treatment. [...] A number of European countries, including Sweden and the UK, adopted a mitigation strategy at the beginning of the pandemic.171920 These countries aimed to minimise the effects of the pandemic on vulnerable populations and to avoid overwhelming health systems by permitting controlled transmission in low risk groups.20 A few countries, including Brazil and Mexico, had no clear goal or coordinated national strategic plan for response to covid-19 in 2020, resulting in uncontrolled waves of community transmission.