Impact of the Coronavirus Epidemic on Local Social and Healthcare Services through the Example of a Hungarian City

Abstract

This paper ana­lyses the im­pacts of the glob­ally dis­rupt­ive COVID-19 pan­demic, and local re­sponses to the above chal­lenges, more spe­cific­ally, the op­er­a­tion of ser­vices under the state of emer­gency through the ex­ample of Győr. With the out­break of the pan­demic, state and mu­ni­cipal stake­hold­ers re­spons­ible for pub­lic ser­vice pro­vi­sion be­came the focus of pub­lic at­ten­tion. Their ca­pa­city to provide quick, ef­fi­cient and firm ac­tion in re­sponse to novel situ­ations and chal­lenges was con­strained by the in­ternal op­er­a­tional de­fi­cien­cies of large care sys­tems, not­ably, un­der­sup­ply in human and fin­an­cial re­sources and the ab­sence of flex­ib­il­ity and speed in vari­ous do­mains of state and mu­ni­cipal ad­min­is­tra­tion. Ex­per­i­ence shows that full com­pli­ance with gov­ern­ment meas­ures and reg­u­la­tions was in­dis­pens­able for the elab­or­a­tion of local re­sponses and good prac­tices. In Győr, des­pite the mu­ni­cip­al­ity’s repu­ta­tion for the high stand­ard op­er­a­tion of health and so­cial care ser­vices in the frame­work of its man­dat­ory and vol­un­tary func­tions and the pres­ence of ad­vanced care sys­tems, tre­mend­ous human re­sources were re­quired to tackle the emer­gency situ­ation. This paper provides a de­tailed dis­cus­sion of the rel­ev­ant loc­ally im­ple­men­ted prac­tices and meas­ures.