The Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published, on Monday 26 September, a technical report on measuring and assessing the preparedness of EU public health systems during the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, i.e. before vaccination began in December 2020.
The report focused specifically on assessing three aspects of preparedness: testing and surveillance, healthcare sector coordination and urgent risk communication during this first pandemic phase. The analysis is based on the experience of five Member States during this period: Germany, Croatia, Spain, Italy and Finland. The paper seeks to learn from the successes and shortcomings of the different systems used to assess performance and capacity.
At the end of the analysis, it appears that the format and type of approach to measuring preparedness used in the WHO Joint External Evaluation process could be useful in assessing the EU’s readiness.
However, the report states that measurement tools and indicators should be developed, which the study found to be underdeveloped. The report also refers to the development of a scoring system or rating scale for each aspect of evaluation.
The assessment phase, which could include ‘stress tests’, would start with a score provided in a preliminary way by the experts. This phase could be followed by peer review meetings that would allow experts from other Member States to analyse the literature and provide a forum for national experts to discuss and seek consensus on the assessment score.
Link to the technical report: https://aeur.eu/f/39x (Original version in French by Émilie Vanderhulst)