Pandemic Preparedness of Countries to Cope With COVID-19

Abstract

Abstract One of the problems hardly clarified in COVID-19 pandemic crisis is the effective of the pandemic preparedness of countries to cope with COVID-19 and reduce negative effects in society. The study here confronts this problem by proponing the Index of resilience that detects which countries have had the best performance to reduce the negative impact of mortality related to COVID-19 pandemic and the Index of preparedness that assesses performance of countries to support COVID-19 vaccinations and prevent future waves of COVID-19. The application of these indexes on selected European countries suggests that, in average, best-performer countries to cope with COVID-19 pandemic crisis have a smaller size of population and high level of health expenditures. However, lessons learned from this study are that manifold countries have several biological security weaknesses and low pandemic preparedness. The policy implications are that governments should revise and reinforce, planning, institutions and overall organization devoted to face pandemic threats.