Abstract
COVID-19 has proven to be a formidable challenge for many countries in the European Union to manage effectively. The European Union has implemented numerous strategies to face emerging issues. Member States have adopted measures such as the closure of borders and significant limitations on the mobility of people to mitigate the spread of the virus. An unprecedented crisis coordination effort between Member States has facilitated the ability to purchase equipment, personal protective equipment, and other medical supplies. Attention has also been focused on providing substantive money for research to find a vaccine and promote effective treatment therapies. Financial support has been made available to protect worker salaries and businesses to help facilitate a return to a functional economy. Lessons learned to date from COVID-19 in the European Union are many; the current crisis highlights the need to think about future pandemics from a population-based management approach and apply outside the box critical thinking. Due to the complexity, intensity, and frequency of complex disasters, global leaders in healthcare, government, and business will need to pivot from siloed approaches to decision-making to embrace multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary levels of cooperation. This cooperation requires courage and leadership to recognize that changes are necessary to avoid making the same mistakes we have planned countless times on avoiding. This study focuses on the European Union’s initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, starting with how the European Union first learned and processed the global information arising out of China, followed by the incremental population-based medicine/management decisions made that currently are defining the European Union’s capacity and capability. The capacity to organize, deliver, and monitor care to a specific clinical population under a population-based management target includes strict social distancing strategies, contact testing and tracing, testing for the virus antigen and its antibodies, isolation, and treatment modalities such as new mitigating medications, and finally, a vaccine.
Highlights
The primary treatments of patients presenting for healthcare worldwide are managed by individual practitioners trained in “one-on-one care focused on individual patient interactions and encounters with ill individuals” [1]
This study focuses on the European Union’s (EU) initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic, starting with how the EU first learned and processed the global information arising out of China, followed by the incremental Population-based medicine/management (PBM) decisions made that currently define the EU’s capacity and capability today [7]
COVID-19 has proven that a disaster does not need to be a terrorist attack or a war with a known opponent
Summary
The primary treatments of patients presenting for healthcare worldwide are managed by individual practitioners trained in “one-on-one care focused on individual patient interactions and encounters with ill individuals” [1]. The emergence of complex global public health crises such as increasing zoonotic infectious diseases, climate change and its extremes, biodiversity loss, emergencies of scarcity, rapid, unsustainable urbanization, migrant and refugee surges, domestic and international terrorism, cyber-security, the civilianization of war and conflict, and the global rise of resistant antibiotics have increased direct and indirect mortality and morbidity [5]. These crises are beyond the current decision-making and operational capabilities of traditional disaster management and its providers, most of whom are community-level practitioners representing every discipline. The authors believe that historical documentation of PBM including strict social distancing strategies (SDS), contact testing and tracing, testing for the virus antigen and its antibodies, isolation, and treatment modalities such as new mitigating medications, and a vaccine, is crucial to the EU’s understanding of the multidisciplinary requirements posed by a pandemic and serves as an essential learning tool for future improvements
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
