The Covid-19 pandemic is both a health emergency and a crisis of governance, testing health and other public institutions to their furthest limits. The unfolding of the pandemic has been shaped as much by the policy responses to it, as by the advance of Covid-19 itself. It is structured by the ongoing dynamics of global geopolitics, capitalist production, scientific knowledge, and information. At the same time, it has activated national and local crises and responses, translating global dislocations into country-level risk factors and local deprivations.