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.
Read more “How comparable is COVID-19 mortality across countries?”
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).
Read more “Effective contact tracing and the role of apps: lessons from Europe”
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.
Read more “Successful find-test-trace-isolate-support systems: how to win at snakes and ladders”
Responses to COVID-19 within schools have varied significantly across the European Region.
Read more “What strategies and approaches are countries implementing within schools both in response to COVID-19 and to localized outbreaks?”
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.
Read more “Who has regulatory responsibility for stocking PPE in ambulatory settings, and how does it work in practice?”
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.
Read more “What do countries need to do to implement effective ‘find, test, trace, isolate and support’ systems?”
Efficient health communication about COVID-19 can raise awareness and motivate more people to engage in health-protective behaviour.
Read more “What channels are countries using to communicate with the public and at what frequency?”
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.
Read more “How do countries structure contact tracing operations and what is the role of apps?”
Care homes have become the focus of the COVID-19 debate across Europe.
Read more “What measures have been taken to protect care homes during the COVID-19 crisis?”
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.
Read more “How comparable is COVID-19 mortality across countries?”