ROLE OF HEALTH POLICY AND ECONOMICS IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19

Abstract

Many international bodies are claiming that second wave is inevitable however risk can be mitigated if we can apply reformed and innovative health policy and health economics strategies, collecting health policies of countries that successfully managed to end the first wave successfully like Germany, Jordan, and South Korea, as well as pitfalls of countries that led unsuccessful strategies like the united kingdom, Sweden or the United States, helped in forming 10 health policy reform strategies, that can be categorized into five pillars (5S); Space (in terms of health service providing capacity and ensuring the existence of resources during cases surge), Staff (in terms of healthcare professionals incentivizing and retention plans), Supplies (in terms of diagnostics, masks, protective equipment) and finally, System (opening the economy on phases with evaluation strategy, applying technologies of identification and tracking contacts, lead proactive testing strategies and not reactive testing strategies, house quarantine registries, oblige large businesses to have social responsibilities to protect their workers, and completing awareness campaigns) and finally Science (investing in research and development for protection, immunization and treatment