What Other Countries Have
done Best In Response to
COVID-19
By Yaneli Montes
Background about COVID-19
According to the CDC, Coronavirus Disease 2019, also known as COVID-19 was
first identified in Wuhan China. COVID-19 got its name due to its crown-like
looking spikes. It has been identified to affect animals such as bats, camels,
cattles and cats as well as humans. Although there are other coronaviruses,
COVID-19 is a new disease that has not been previously detected in humans. This
disease can cause mild to no symptoms but it can also cause severe illness that
can lead to death. Common groups that are in danger of getting severly ill from
COVID-19 are elderly people (CDC n.d).
Protecting yourself from COVID-19
Due to this infectious disease spreading quickly all over the world the CDC like
any other country made a list of precautions so people can follow them, this list is
as follows:
1. Wear a mask
2. Keep a distance of 6 feet away from each other
3. Abstain from any social gatherings
Countries that did the best to Prevent COVID-19 from
Spreading
Although the United States made precaution regulations to avoid coronavirus from
spreading they were unsuccessful to do so. Other countries compared to the
United States did a better job to keep their citizens from drastically spreading this
disease. According to Tom Frieden, these countries had taken action earlier, for
example, enforced regulations at an early stage, learned from past deadly disease
spreads (epidemics), being the best at testing and having a better public
communication (2021).
Taiwan: Best at Taking Action Early
The world was first alerted about COVID-19 from travelers that were arriving from
Wuhan,China. The country immediately took action by stopping cruise ships and
flights, along with that, the country made it mandatory for the people who had
traveled to self quarantine. To the people that had been in contact with covid-19
the country gave out money, enforced testing all over the country and increased its
production on face masks in a period of a month. With these actions that Taiwan
took it decreased the spread of COVID, the U.S had more deaths every 5 minutes
compared to Taiwan (Frieden 2021).
Taiwan Coronavirus
Cases
According to world meter,
Taiwan has a total cases of
1,009, 10 deaths and 969
people who have recovered from
Covid.
https://www.worldometers
.info/coronavirus/country/t
aiwan/
Liberia: Best at Learning from Previous Disease Spreads
On March 2014, Liberia was the third country to report Ebola cases that were
spread from Guinea. As Ebola was spreading quickly by December of 2014, the
country had reported a large amount of deaths. Due to this huge epidemic that
Libera went through, when Coronavirus started to make an appearance worldwide
Liberia was one of the few countries to enforce screenings at airports, rapid testing
and enforced quarantine.
Training Health Workers in Liberia
Learning from their huge epidemic outbreak on March, 2014 Liberia had learn that
they had a low distribution of health workers and services which had led to a huge
Ebola spread and unattended cases. As a result of this, special precautions such
as accurately training its health workers for COVID-19 was taken into
consideration. These health workers were trained to establish adequate
healthcare systems by educating communities about the spread of Covid,
monitoring sick patients that were isolating from home and taking care of
themselves.
New Zealand: Best at Controlling COVID-19
New Zealand's technique to stop the spread of covid-19 was to immediately take
action. According to World Health Organizations, New Zealand’s plan was altered
by Chian’s joint mission. Three days after WHO announced the coronavirus
outbreak, New Zealand decided to take emergency measures and strengthen
them as weeks passed by. Along with immediately taking action, New Zealand
worked closely with WHO to prevent from COVID-19 spreading in both New
Zealand and Pacific Island countries. Actions were being done such as, obtaining
supplies and training their health workers.
New Zealand: Best at Controlling COVID-19
The country was taking their decisions based on research and public health
advice. WHO’s assessments and information updates was a huge public health
advice that New Zealand followed in order to make decisions on their next step to
battle the spread of COVID-19. The International Health Regulations was another
resource that was giving information about the virus. Although New Zealand has
low numbers of cases, they refuse to stop there and continue to find strategies to
prevent the spread of covid. It is important for them to maintain their strategies and
improve as time goes by (WHO n.d).
Number of Cases in
New Zealand
2,470 total number of
Coronavirus cases, 26 deaths
and 2,377 recovered cases.
https://www.worldometers.info/
coronavirus/country/new-zeala
nd/
South Korea: Best at Testing
South Korea began to test early when they found out that some people presented
no symptoms when catching the virus. The country began to test more than twice
to ensure that the testing results were accurate (Frieden 2021). According to the
author, Michael J. Ahn, apart from having fast testing sites, South Korea
government also covered every medical costs for patients that were dealing with
Covid. People with Covid got paid leave and unemployed people got basic living
expenses(2020).
Hong Kong: Best at Quarantining
Since Hong Kong is one of the countries with the highest population of people, it
was one of the countries that had strict enforcement protocols for quarantine. It
was important for them to have strict quarantine protocols due to a high population
of people, with this it would avoid a high spread of covid cases. There were
quarantine centers for people who had tested positive for covid (Frieden 2021).
Anybody that traveled to Hong Kong was subject to be quarantine for 14 days.
Finland: Best at
public
Communication
Denmark was one of the countries
to have a strong media
communication. This strong
communication helped educate
people about the virus and destroy
any assumptions or false
information that could potentially
roam around the country. Finland in
fact, in ordered to have better
communication, partnered with
media influencers to help spread
the awareness of the virus and
spread the right information
(Frieden 2021).
Senegal: Getting COVID-19 Responses Right
According to the author Jane Eagles, Senegal has had a decreased in the number
of people that have been hospitalized, a decrease in deaths and has had a high
rate of recoveries since April. What senegal is doing in order to achieve this
significant improvement is by providing their people with covid-19 testing kits,
creating robot doctors, creating an app to help people keep up with covid-19 news
and strong communication within communities (2020).
Senegal Goals to Improve
● Covid-19 testing kits will be able to be ● An app called ““Alerte Santé Sénégal” will
done at home, with this kits it is in hope help the people be alerted by daily news
that they will be able to test everyone and updates about covid-19. The
without them having to go to a testing information is taken from official sources
center and having little to no contact with such as the Ministry of Health and Social
an individual. Action, Centre Des Opérations d’Urgence
● Robot doctors will be created in order to Sanitaire and WHO.
care for patients that have been tested ● Having a digital communication will
positive for Coronavirus, limiting the decrease the spread of Covid-19. This
spread of covid. technique will help people report any
suspected cases of Covid as well as
providing any important information about
COVID-19.
References
● Slide 2: About covid-19. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, ● Slide 8: Training the Trainers: Securing the foundation
2021, from of an EFFECTIVE COVID-19 response in Liberia.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cdcrespo (2021, February 24). Retrieved March 24, 2021, from
nse/about-COVID-19.html https://preventepidemics.org/stories/training-the-traine
● Slide 4: Frieden, T. (2021, January 01). Which rs-securing-the-foundation-of-an-effective-covid-19-re
sponse-in-liberia/
countries have RESPONDED best to Covid-19?
● Slide 12: Ahn, M. (2020, April 13). Combating
Retrieved March 24, 2021, from
COVID-19: Lessons from South Korea. Retrieved
https://www.wsj.com/articles/which-countries-have-res March 24, 2021, from
ponded-best-to-covid-19-11609516800 https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2020/04/13/c
● Slide 6: Taiwan. (n.d.). Retrieved March 24, 2021, ombating-covid-19-lessons-from-south-korea/
from ● Slide 15&16: By: Jane Eagles. (2020, September 14).
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/tai 4 innovations helping Senegal lead in the fight against
wan/ COVID-19. Retrieved March 25, 2021, from
https://www.one.org/us/blog/innovations-senegal-covi
d-19/
