Reflecting on Australia’s Health Services Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: What can be Learned?

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Background

At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world, giving rise to one of the largest international public health responses in history. The infectious nature of human to human transmission, lack of personal protective equipment and significant lethality of COVID-19 forced unprecedented adaptation and response of health services. The COVID-19 pandemic markedly transformed the delivery of preventive and therapeutic health services, as well as aged care services. As a country, Australia may be a useful example understand the challenges and share the strategies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the forefront of Australia’s response was collaboration throughout the entire country to prioritize the right to life and health for all. Similarly to many countries, Australia’s health care workforces operated under constant pressure, which placed focus on the need for organizational strategies to support the overworked and overwhelmed forces. In response, and in contrast to many countries, Australia were quick in their strategies to keep rates low; the early closure of international borders and mandatory home isolation for returning citizens provided time for the country to build a testing and tracing system. Additionally, their health services collaborated and supported its different communities, who typically experience inequalities in health, to host their own health response. Despite over 20% of the population being infected, the country had a low death rate (23/100,000) and low case fatality rate (0.1%). Australia’s speed of adaptation in the design and redesign of work processes and services, the speed of translation of research into updated care and therapies as well as the strategies to address the inequalities in health have been unparalleled.

Australia’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic offers valuable and actionable insights for decision makers worldwide, which could be applicable in the wider context of other global crisis. Therefore, this collection calls for papers to record the learnings from Australia’s experience, to share the successful strategies that can be learnt from their response. This Research Topic aims to gather manuscripts covering the following themes, but not limited to:

• Changes in health care delivery, design and redesign of work processes and services (including telehealth, aged care and the delivery of preventative and therapeutic health services);
• The implementation of new technologies (including vaccines and reaching disadvantaged populations);
• Management of workplace changes, overwhelmed workforces and the re-prioritization of activities (including staff numbers and staff placement);
• Data management, contact tracing and public health measures to slow infectious transmission and progression (including data led decision making and communications with the public).

It is expected that many papers will be community case studies as the speed of the transformations was extreme and in many cases too fast to establish rigorous scientific enquiry/research studies. Community case studies from non-traditional sources are also welcome to capture the overall richness of the experience.

Keywords: COVID-19, Health Services, Australia, Workforce, Disadvantaged Populations, Remote Care, Vaccination, Health Inequities, Global Crisis, Digital Equity, Public Communications

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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