ABSTRACT
Covid-19 pandemic which emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 has led to a global health crisis and a profound socio-economic distress affecting people’s “normal” life. Like the rest of the world, Maghreb countries – Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia – recorded their first Covid-19 cases in February and March 2020, marking the beginning of an era of uncertainty. This chapter analyses Covid-19 policy responses in the three Maghreb countries. Tunisia managed to “flatten the curve” down to zero infections in less than three months after the first wave, easing its reopening in the summer of 2020, but later encountered difficulties managing the second and third waves. Morocco’s counter-epidemic measures assisted with advanced mass vaccination allowed for reopening twice in June 2020 and 2021. In Algeria, the sanitary crisis caused by Covid-19 pandemic was met with mass protests as the country was (and is still) going through political transformation, creating therefore double-challenge for the supreme powers to manage Covid-19 crisis and its socio-economic consequences, in addition to ensuring peaceful political transition.
