COVID-19 pandemic: What can the west learn from the east?

Abstract

Differences in public health approaches to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic could largely explain substantial variations in epidemiological indicators (such as incidence and mortality) between the West and the East. COVID-19 revealed vulnerabilities of most western countries’ healthcare systems in their response to the ongoing public health crisis. Hence, western countries can possibly learn from practices from several East Asian countries regarding infrastructures, epidemiological surveillance and control strategies to mitigate the public health impact of the pandemic. In this paper, we discuss that the lack of rapid and timely community-centered approaches, and most importantly weak public health infrastructures, might have resulted in a high number of infected cases and fatalities in many western countries.