Abstract
With the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of society's capability to deal with an acute health crisis is, once again, brought to the forefront. In the core is the need to broaden the perspective on the determinants of a country's ability to cope with the spread of the virus. This paper is about bringing together diverse aspects of readiness and initial reaction to a COVID-19 outbreak. We proposed an integrated evaluation framework which encapsulates six dimensions of readiness and initial reaction. Using a specific multi-level outranking method, we analysed how these dimensions affect the relative positioning of European countries in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak. The results revealed that the order of countries based on our six-dimensional assessment framework is significantly reminiscent of the actual positioning of countries in terms of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in the initial phase of the pandemic. Our findings confirm that only when a country's readiness is complemented by an appropriate societal reaction we can expect a less severe outcome. Moreover, our study revealed different patterns of performance between former communist Eastern European and Western European countries.
Highlights
A major health crisis, such as the COVID–19 pandemic declared by WHO on March 11 2020, is a huge challenge for any society
When we introduce the criterion of mobility reduction, as expected, the red countries begin move downwards, while the green ones move in the opposite direction (Fig 2a)
There is no doubt that the current situation regarding the outbreak of the COVID-19 is a multidimensional concern
Summary
A major health crisis, such as the COVID–19 pandemic declared by WHO on March 11 2020, is a huge challenge for any society. Such events become even more dangerous if the society itself is in a state of political, cultural or social crisis. This means that public health capacity to respond to such serious threats are significantly limited. Pandemics are health issues and political, economic and cultural matters. As elaborated in Lofredo [2] such circumstances can trigger waves of social confusion and panic, uncontrolled waves of contagion, and political and social unrest. Protests in the summer of 2020 against the government’s restriction of coronavirus in Germany, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Israel confirm these fears
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