With limited COVID-19 vaccine supplies available during the first quarter of 2021, countries across Europe were faced with the difficult task of determining which demographic groups to prioritise for vaccination.

Since the beginning of 2021, reports of the spread of genetic variants of the COVID-19 virus have increasingly shaped the evolution of the pandemic and countries’ response strategies across the WHO European Region.

Across the European Region, the spring semester of the 2020-21 school year (that began in January 2021) has presented multiple challenges to educators, learners and communities amidst increasing cases of SARS-CoV-2 and variants of concern.

This snapshot looks at the policies that countries are adopting to ensure minimal waste and maximal utilization of Covid-19 vaccines, while also meeting the objectives of a quick rollout.

With COVID-19 vaccination campaigns largely underway across Europe and the supply of vaccines expected to drastically increase in the second quarter, health systems across Europe are now looking at working as quickly as they can to get available doses into arms.

Mass gatherings or community events are hotspots of infectious disease diffusion and can lead to a surge of cases.

The Covid-19 pandemic evolved rapidly from a health crisis into an economic crisis in most countries around the world.

While the initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic was focused on preventing and mitigating a public health crisis, it has rapidly spiraled in many countries into a full blown economic and public finance crisis.

Intensive care units (ICUs) and emergency rooms (ERs) across Europe are under pressure due to the increased volume of patients affected by COVID-19.

From the early days of the pandemic policy analysts have been trying to understand what constitutes a resilient health systems response.

COVID-19 has posed huge challenges for Europe’s health systems but also for European solidarity.

Developing, procuring, and distributing vaccines for COVID-19 could have very good or bad outcomes for solidarity, public health, and science. The European Union (EU), whose public health role advanced greatly in 2020, has a Vaccines Strategy that goes far beyond earlier EU procurement strategies.

Successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic requires coordination within and across governments.

In the absence of effective treatments or a vaccine, governments depend on public policy to respond to COVID-19. This article reviews key issues surrounding transitions – the “closing” and “reopening” of economies during the pandemic.

Before an effective COVID-19 vaccine becomes widely available, countries must find a way to safeguard their economies and the welfare of their populations, while continuously mitigating the impact of COVID-19 through the implementation of public health and social measures.

As the pandemic has evolved, each country in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region has applied entry requirements for some international travellers.

All countries in Europe will have to find solutions to protect hospitals from revenue shortfalls and to adequately reimburse for COVID-19-related costs of care.

COVID-19 has affected the incomes of some health professionals by reducing demand for care and increasing expenditures for treatment preparedness.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated pre-existing problems in the long-term care sector.

The organization and provision of ambulatory care, that is, care provided in an outpatient setting without admission to a hospital (including primary care and outpatient specialised care), has been heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a rapid rise in the use of remote consultations by telephone and video link.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals face the concurrent challenges of maintaining routine services while attending to COVID-19 patients.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put health systems and their ability to deliver health care services under strain.

Health workers have been at the forefront of treating and caring for patients with COVID-19.

Finding ways to increase the surge capacity and flexibility of the health workforce has been fundamental to delivering an effective COVID-19 response.

Surveillance and monitoring systems are central to governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article focuses on assessing differences in mortality recording across countries and over time, to inform country comparisons.

Contact tracing is an essential tool to support the transition back to normal life during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article explores how 31 countries operate contact tracing, using data extracted from the COVID-19 Health Systems Response Monitor (HSRM).

In order to ease lockdown restrictions and prevent a second wave of infections, countries must be able to find, test, trace, isolate and support new COVID-19 cases.

Responses to COVID-19 within schools have varied significantly across the European Region.

As the COVID-19 pandemic unravelled, hospitals had to deal with the often overwhelming need to treat patients exposed to the virus. To minimize exposure and maximize health workforce capacity, many hospitals postponed elective procedures and non-essential services.

The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) (e.g. gloves, medical masks, goggles, etc.), and large disruptions in the global marketplace made it difficult for virtually all countries to obtain PPE for their own needs in the first months of the pandemic.

Federalism is the kind of unavoidable reality that shapes every element of public health policy and politics in federal countries.

This article, published open-access in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, shows how a ‘Snakes and Ladders’ board game can be a useful framework for understanding the opportunities and pitfalls that countries face when operationalising a find, test, trace, isolate, support strategy.

Efficient health communication about COVID-19 can raise awareness and motivate more people to engage in health-protective behaviour.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected incomes of health professionals in two important ways.

In this policy snapshot we provide a comparative analysis of how 30 countries in the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region structure their contact tracing operations.

The coronavirus crisis creates three important challenges for hospital finances.

Care homes have become the focus of the COVID-19 debate across Europe.

Civil society in health is diverse, ubiquitous, and can be helpful.

Dashboards from the World Health Organization (WHO), Johns Hopkins University, and Worldometer, among others, publish information on daily numbers and rates of COVID-19 cases and deaths. However, they rely on summary data supplied by countries (or, sometimes, a variety of sources) and the deaths ultimately counted as COVID-19 can differ substantially, complicating cross-country comparisons. 

As the COVID-19 outbreak started to spread from the initial epicentre in Wuhan, China to other continents and regional hot-spots, countries began to assemble a battery of measures aimed at disrupting the transmission of the virus.

In every country the military has a range of specialist resources that can be brought to bear in crises as well as a distinctive culture and legal status.

Wearing masks in public places is increasingly seen as having an important contribution to containing the spread of COVID-19 as countries transition out of lockdown measures, especially when physical distancing is not always possible.  

Providing appropriate emotional, financial and practical support to protect health workers’ mental health and wellbeing and enable them to do their job are crucial to delivering an effective COVID-19 response.

COVID-19 spreads through inhalation of small droplets from the coughing or sneezing of people who are infected, as well as through touching contaminated surfaces. Hence, public health measures in the form of isolation and quarantine of confirmed and suspected cases are key to preventing the further spread of the virus.

Many countries around the world are currently planning measures for re-opening their economies in the wake of the first wave of coronavirus, or for that matter taking them. There is little sign of coordination or a common approach to this difficult problem. 

In order to know when to lift or impose restrictions, governments need good data and the ability to interpret it.

Creating a strategic plan to manage coronavirus is only part of the battle. A number of mediating factors govern the extent to which strategic plans will actually be effective. 

To combat the COVID-19 pandemic, countries are mobilizing additional domestic resources for their health systems, not to mention for other forms of social protection and economic stimuli. But how much extra money are we really talking about when it comes to health?

Policy-makers are currently facing the challenge of striking the right balance between two competing goals: ensuring adequate capacities to treat those affected by COVID-19 and providing services that are necessary to maintain the health of the population. 

Digital health tools are playing a central role in responding to COVID-19; some are established tools, some are existing tools being used in new ways, and increasingly there is attention to developing specific new digital health tools to respond to the pandemic.

Health care providers need flexibility to be able to respond quickly to meet increased demand in the outbreak, to offer new methods of service delivery and to maintain essential health services for non-COVID-19 conditions. The way in which providers are paid can be an obstacle to these objectives.

A strong health system response to the pandemic requires additional public funds that can be deployed quickly and transparently. Without additional public funding, the health system will not only struggle to control the pandemic but also may fail to maintain essential health services for other conditions.

Households increasingly face financial strain as the COVID-19 outbreak becomes an economic crisis in many countries. If people face concerns about health care affordability, they may delay seeking treatment or be prevented from obtaining the services they need, making the outbreak harder to control.

Within and across European countries, there is great divergence in hospital bed and intensive care unit (ICU) capacity. To alleviate pressure on intensive-care capacity, national and regional governments and hospitals have started to help each other by transferring critically ill patients from the worst-hit regions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed immense pressure on the health workforce across Europe and worldwide, which has been exacerbated by workforce depletion as health professionals themselves are at high risk of being infected by COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to many countries facing shortages of sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE). The combination of increased demand for PPE and large disruptions in the global marketplace has made it difficult for virtually all countries to obtain PPE for their own needs. 

Intersectoral governance for health has long been seen as a “nice to have”- a search for useful win-wins between sectors. In the COVID-19 pandemic, it is critical and occurring virtually everywhere in one way or another. 

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have been advised by WHO to expand testing in order to detect COVID-19 cases early, ensure their isolation, trace and isolate their contacts, and determine the epidemiological situation as accurately as possible.

Available evidence indicates that while anyone can become infected and become ill with COVID-19, older people and those with chronic conditions are most susceptible to serious complications or death. This raises important questions, a priori, about the vulnerability of European populations to COVID-19 based on their age-demographics and disease.