Can China’s ‘standard of care’ for COVID-19 be replicated in Europe?

Abstract

The Director-General of the WHO has suggested that China’s approach to the COVID-19 crisis could be the standard of care for global epidemics. However, as remarkable as the Chinese strategy might be, it cannot be replicated in other countries and certainly not in Europe. In Europe, there is a distribution of power between the European Union and its member states. In contrast, China’s political power is concentrated in the central government. This enables it to take immediate measures that affect the entire country, such as massive quarantines or closing borders. Moreover, the Chinese legal framework includes restrictions on privacy and other human rights that are unknown in Europe. In addition, China has the technological power to easily impose such restrictions. In most European countries, that would be science fiction. These conditions have enabled China to combat epidemics like no other country can. However, the WHO might have been overoptimistic. The Chinese standard of care for treating COVID-19 also raises problematic issues for human rights, and the real consequences of these actions remain to be seen.

Quarantines: Between Precaution and Necessity. A Look at COVID-19

“…China already had a massive system of surveillance in place, with millions of cameras spread out in major cities for facial recognition. This ‘Big Brother’ mechanism helped to control people during the quarantine ( Abhivardhan and Agarwal, 2019 ; Jakhar, 2020 ; Qu and Zhang, 2020 ; Raposo, 2020 ) (for instance, by spotting people not wearing masks to receive penalties).…”

Management and Data Sharing of COVID-19 Pandemic Information

“…3 Given such extreme circumstances, comprehensive data-sharing and management of the COVID-19 pandemic information are urgently needed and critical for researchers, epidemiologists, physicians, bioengineers, funding agencies, and governments to communicate and work together most effectively in developing new vaccines, drugs, methods, therapeutics, and strategies for the prevention and treatment of the deadly pandemic. 4,5 It is well known that the pandemic information is truly a ''big data,'' including at least the following: (1) COVID-19 patient specimen resources (including both sample materials and sample-tracking data) in biobanks, hospitals, or repositories; (2) patient electronic health records (EHRs) (including patient informed consent, laboratory diagnosis results, imaging records, medical history, and clinical outcomes); (3) ongoing research results on the coronavirus and the development of new vaccines and drugs in research institutions, biotechnology companies, and pharmaceutical corporations; (4) reports of ongoing clinical trials and treatment methods from medical centers; (5) policies and guidelines on COVID-19 research as well as sample handling and testing, established by leading global public health organizations; (6) laws and regulations for the pandemic prevention and treatment, established by governments; and (7) the COVID-19 outbreak tracking records with precautionary actions updated by local governments and international organizations in a timely fashion.…”

“…If executed well, such an approach could have far-reaching impacts on all countries and high at-risk territories in a quicker, safer, and most importantly a standardized way, such as when effective treatments are discovered, the results can be duplicated globally. 6 Several integrated model platforms for national and international data sharing and management of COVID-19 pandemic information are proposed to advance the data-driven and evidence-based COVID-19 research collaborations for the development of both preventive strategies and therapeutic approaches.…”

Outcomes in CME/CPD - Special Collection: How to make the “pyramid” a perpetuum mobile

“…• Due to national regulations and/or underfunding of (parts of) health-care systems, availability of treatment may be limited and/or unequally distributed in or between different countries [e.g. [3][4][5][6][7][8].…”

“…As illustrated in Figure 1 , Competence does not inevitably lead to Performance: Due to national regulations and/or underfunding of (parts of) health-care systems, availability of treatment may be limited and/or unequally distributed in or between different countries [e.g. 3–8 ]. Resources to meet challenges such as Covid-19 may be insufficient: shortages in staff, beds in intensive care units, respirators or personal protective equipment have uniformly become the responsibility of physicians [ 9–15 ].…”