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The COVID-19 pandemic: territorial, political and governance dimensions of the crisis

As editors of Territory, Politics, Governance, we want first and foremost to express our solidarity with those affected and impacted directly by the COVID-19 pandemic. While none of us is untouched by the current public health crisis, what has unfolded thus far reveals only too clearly the inbuilt inequalities of contemporary capitalist society in terms of mortality, illness and recovery (for a pre-COVID-19 discussion of the United States, see Case & Deaton, 2020; and for the UK, see Wilkinson & Pickett, 2011). In the UK and United States, for example, ethnic minority communities are overrepresented in terms of mortality from COVID-19 (The Guardian, 2020a). Key workers (and ethnic minority communities are overrepresented in some areas such as health and social care) continue to operate in circumstances (not of their own choosing) where, depending on country and locale, the availability of personal protection equipment (PPE) is widely different in terms of efficacy, quality and protection standards. Crises often reveal what Shuster (2020) describes as structural inequalities (such as the unequal distribution of resources or the uneven delivery of healthcare) that produce harmful effects against some groups more than others. The UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) released March–April 2020 data for England and Wales which revealed that COVID-19-related death rates in the most deprived areas are more than double those of the less deprived. Profound socioeconomic-, gender-, classand ethnicityrelated disparities in COVID-19 mortality are being revealed on a weekly basis (ONS, 2020). Demands to practise ‘social distancing’ reveal, moreover, further social and spatial schisms as the capacity and capability to do so will depend on household dynamics, social capital, financial resources and the uneven effects of community policing. For example, in many countries there is an urgent and ongoing discussion about the fate of vulnerable and elderly communities and