5.C. Workshop: COVID-19 response in Europe one year on: a tale of five countries

Abstract   In November 2021 it will have been almost two years since the emergence of the COVID19 outbreak. The scale, duration and impact of the pandemic was unforeseen and unprecedented, with Europe being among the hardest hit regions. Within the region, individual countries have taken very different approaches to pandemic management and have achieved very different results. There are therefore wide variation in terms of diseases incidence and mortality within the region. The availability of vaccination has again widened differences with large differences between countries in term of vaccine access, and vaccination behaviour and coverage. At the World Congress of Public Health in November 2020, we compared and contrasted the situation and response in five countries in the European region: The UK, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Sweden. These countries were selected based on their very different approaches to managing the crisis and wide differences in terms of the epidemiology of COVID19 in country. Since then the pandemic has expanded more than 60 times in terms of number of cases, most countries experience serial lockdowns, and vaccines became available, which countries adopted at very different rates. In this interactive workshop we will invite representatives from those same five countries to discuss how and why their countries' situation evolved the way it did, and how policy choices in the last year have impacted on their national epidemiological situation. The session will go beyond simple description and will enable each country to reflect on different components of their management approach such as case identification, contact tracing, testing, social distancing, mask use, communication, travel restrictions, and vaccination, and contrast it with others. We plan to have short and effective 5 min presentations followed by a longer and constructive thought-provoking moderated discussion. Importantly, the five European case studies will offer ground to discuss issues such as balancing public health with other imperatives such as economic ones, equity and the pros and cons of a national vs a regional approach to pandemic management. The audience will be engaged through a Q&A session. Key messages Balancing public health with other imperatives is a challenge to which no universally agreed approach exists. The lack of a unified approach to pandemic management has led to wide inequalities within the region. A Tale of 5 countries- the UK perspective Jamie Lopez Bernal Public Health England, London, UK A Tale of 5 countries- the Sweden perspective Sara Byfors Public Health Agency of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden A Tale of 5 countries- the Portugal perspective Ricardo Mexia Ministry of Health, Lisbon, Portugal A Tale of 5 countries- the Poland perspective Maria Ganczak University of Zielona Gora, Zielona Gora, Poland A Tale of 5 countries- the Italy perspective Anna Odone University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy