WS 13 - Are Countries Ready for the Next Pandemic?

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed suboptimal levels of country response, resulting in huge impact on individuals, communities, societies and economies. The Economist Impact has completed a research project, supported by Sanofi, analysing the COVID-19 response in twelve countries from the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions. The project combined desk research and insights from an international Advisory Panel of experts involved in the response to COVID-19 and other infectious disease outbreaks. Based on these findings, EI has created an evidence-based policy toolkit structured around government, health systems and social factors. The purpose of the toolkit is to enable countries to learn from the lessons of others’ experiences during COVID-19 to improve the response to pandemics. During this workshop EI will present its evidence-based toolkit, moderate a discussion among experts in the field and facilitate conversations between the workshop participants about how these findings can be applied to their countries, including the following: 1. How can the toolkit be implemented in countries? What might an implementation roadmap look like? 2. Share real-world examples that can inspire fellow workshop attendees and inform any future development of the toolkit. 3. Identify what needs to be in place to enable countries to respond more urgently and effectively to the next pandemic? The outcome of the workshop will be supporting the implementation of this evidence-based toolkit into practice to improve future pandemic responses.