Towards Stronger EU Governance of Health Threats after the COVID-19 Pandemic

Renda, Andrea; Castro, Rosa

doi:10.1017/err.2020.34

“…A recent independent evaluation of the ECDC also concluded that gaps and variation in member states reporting of data continued to hinder European surveillance efforts (PWC, 2019). The voluntary nature of current surveillance initiatives leaves the ECDC with few levers to penalise member states which repeatedly fail to meet reporting standards (Renda and Castro, 2020). Third, current EU treaties may need to be amended.…”

Section: Legislative Barriersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time to strengthen capacity in infectious disease control at the European level

Anderson¹,

Mossialos²

2020

International Journal of Infectious Diseases

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The COVID-19 pandemic has made the European Commission revaluate its role in member states health systems. In response, the European Union is planning to significantly increase investment to tackle crossborder health threats. The European Centre for Communicable Disease Prevention and Control is well positioned to capitalise upon this increased investment by designing and implementing a renewed European strategy for infection disease control. To secure meaningful and sustainable improvements, the European Centre for Communicable Disease Prevention and Control needs to be strengthened with more resources, an expanded geographical scope and legislative change.

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“…Globally, by 14 September 2020 with confirmed cases surpassing 29,185,779 and reported deaths approaching 9, 28, 290 several governments worldwide responded by imposing harsh containment and quarantine rules (Renda and Castro, 2020;WHO 2020). The distribution of COVID-19 cases worldwide, as of 15 July 2020 (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) can be seen in (Fig 1 a,b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The environmental impact of COVID-19

Ansari¹,

Owens²,

Khan³

2020

Preprint

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COVID-19, previously known as “2019 novel coronavirus”, is a newly discovered virus which causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, similar to corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which has spread widely through human to human contact and was declared a pandemic by the WHO in March 2020. To cope with this pandemic many countries have adopted nationwide lockdowns which restrict nonessential activities and encourage their populations to avoid public transport, work from hone wherever possible, and to maintain social distancing at all times. While the severity of these shutdowns has varied with country, large geographic regions of the world (including China, India, Iran, Italy, Spain, and the USA) have all been severely affected, not just in the loss of human life, but also in terms of the financial impacts the lockdowns will have on their countries future prosperityIt was previously reported that a number of environmental factors, including humidity and temperature, played an important role in development and spread of the SARS-Corona Virus infection with the virus retaining viability for over 5 days at temperatures between 22–25oC and relative humidity (RH) of 40–50%. Whereas, elevated temperatures and higher RH (38oC, and >95% RH) decreased virus viability (Kroumpouzos et al., 2020). The spread of COVID-19 started in low temperature areas of China, with major outbreaks subsequently occurring in Iran, Japan, Northern Italy and South Korea. These new virus epicenters all had similar temperature and latitude, along the 30-50◦N” zone. Subsequently, the virus was spread to regions of elevated temperature, such as India, the Middle East and Thailand, due to international travel (Kroumpouzos et al., 2020).The aim of this study was to consider the environmental impact of COVID-19, including water pollution. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first section the current literature related to COVID-19 is reviewed. In the second section a recent update on COVID-19 globally is presented, followed by a descriptive impact on the environment in the third section and finally in the fourth section the COVID-19 related worldwide environmental impact is discussed. Since COVID-19 is a currently an active pandemic with no end in sight, while constructive conclusions can only be made on the limited data currently, which may be prone to high errors. However, these conclusions may provide some preliminary suggestions for assisting in assessing spreading patterns of COVID-19 across the globe, and may be of long-term significances with respect to assessing the environmental impact of lockdown policies due to COVID-19 worldwide.

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“…The COVID-19 outbreak, which first appeared in Wuhan, China in December 2019, rapidly spread to the rest of the world, including Asia, Europe and the United States, within just a few months (Renda and Castro, 2020), resulting in the World Health Organization (WHO) to declared a global health emergency in January 2020 (Arora et al 2020;Conforti et al 2020;Sohrabi et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The environmental impact of COVID-19

Ansari¹,

Owens²,

Khan³

2020

Preprint

0

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

COVID-19, previously known as “2019 novel coronavirus”, is a newly discovered virus which causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, similar to corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which has spread widely through human to human contact and was declared a pandemic by the WHO in March 2020. To cope with this pandemic many countries have adopted nationwide lockdowns which restrict nonessential activities and encourage their populations to avoid public transport, work from hone wherever possible, and to maintain social distancing at all times. While the severity of these shutdowns has varied with country, large geographic regions of the world (including China, India, Iran, Italy, Spain, and the USA) have all been severely affected, not just in the loss of human life, but also in terms of the financial impacts the lockdowns will have on their countries future prosperityIt was previously reported that a number of environmental factors, including humidity and temperature, played an important role in development and spread of the SARS-Corona Virus infection with the virus retaining viability for over 5 days at temperatures between 22–25oC and relative humidity (RH) of 40–50%. Whereas, elevated temperatures and higher RH (38oC, and >95% RH) decreased virus viability (Kroumpouzos et al., 2020). The spread of COVID-19 started in low temperature areas of China, with major outbreaks subsequently occurring in Iran, Japan, Northern Italy and South Korea. These new virus epicenters all had similar temperature and latitude, along the 30-50◦N” zone. Subsequently, the virus was spread to regions of elevated temperature, such as India, the Middle East and Thailand, due to international travel (Kroumpouzos et al., 2020).The aim of this study was to consider the environmental impact of COVID-19, including water pollution. The paper is divided into four sections. In the first section the current literature related to COVID-19 is reviewed. In the second section a recent update on COVID-19 globally is presented, followed by a descriptive impact on the environment in the third section and finally in the fourth section the COVID-19 related worldwide environmental impact is discussed. Since COVID-19 is a currently an active pandemic with no end in sight, while constructive conclusions can only be made on the limited data currently, which may be prone to high errors. However, these conclusions may provide some preliminary suggestions for assisting in assessing spreading patterns of COVID-19 across the globe, and may be of long-term significances with respect to assessing the environmental impact of lockdown policies due to COVID-19 worldwide.

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Towards Stronger EU Governance of Health Threats after the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cited by 73 publications

References 12 publications

Time to strengthen capacity in infectious disease control at the European level

Time to strengthen capacity in infectious disease control at the European level

The environmental impact of COVID-19

The environmental impact of COVID-19

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