Healthcare responses to COVID-19 in different countries

Abstract

This paper aims to identify the social, economic and demographic factors, as well as the health system characteristics and immediate actions taken to combat new COVID-19 coronavirus infection, which contributed to the rapid stabilization of the epidemic situation in different countries. Fourteen countries were chosen for comparison: Belarus, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, China, Norway, Poland, the United States, the Russian Federation, Taiwan, Sweden and South Korea. To carry out our task we first analyzed the epidemic indicators (the number of detected COVID-19 cases per one million people, the lethality and mortality from the infection per 100,000 people, the number of diagnostic tests performed), then the demographic (average age of the population, population density, life expectancy) and economic indicators (gross domestic product – GDP per capita), and then assessed the  healthcare system (total and state expenses on public health in GDP share; the availability of inpatient beds and practitioners; the model of public health financing and management). It is shown that the main factors of a successful fight against the spreading of COVID-19 are: early response and decisive actions; centralized management of regions and the sanitary-epidemiological service led by the Minister of Health; a nationwide unified action plan; mass testing and rapid contact tracing; the centralized distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE), medicines and other supplies, along with monitoring of the demand for them; the use of advanced information technologies; sufficient capacity of the healthcare system (availability of reserve bed capacity and medical staff); briefings with the population carried out by experts and the Minister of Health.