An integrated view on society readiness and initial reaction to COVID-19: A study across European countries

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. Thi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2020-11, Vol.15 (11), p.e0242838
Main Authors: Petrovic, Marijana, Petrovic, Dalibor, Cokic, Vladan P, Bojkovic, Natasa, Adrish, Muhammad
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Analysis
Control
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
COVID-19 - diagnosis
COVID-19 - epidemiology
COVID-19 - prevention & control
COVID-19 - virology
Data integration
Disease transmission
Emergency preparedness
Epidemics
Europe - epidemiology
Female
Global Health
Government Regulation
Health policy
Health risks
Humans
Infection control
Male
Management
Mass Screening - methods
Medical research
Medicine and Health Sciences
Middle Aged
Morbidity
Mortality
Outbreaks
Pandemics
Pandemics - prevention & control
Patient Isolation - legislation & jurisprudence
Patient Isolation - methods
People and Places
Philosophy
Physical Distancing
Politics
Public health
Quarantine - legislation & jurisprudence
Quarantine - methods
Risk Factors
SARS-CoV-2
Social distancing
Society
Traffic control
Trust
Viral diseases
Viruses
Young Adult
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0242838