International examples of primary care COVID-19 preparedness and response: a comparison of four countries

Abstract

We report the learnings gleaned from a four-country panel (Australia, South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria) sharing their countries’ COVID-19 primary healthcare approaches and implementation of policy at the World Organization of Family Doctor’s World virtual conference in November. The countries differ considerably with respect to size, national economies, average age, unemployment rates and proportion of people living rurally. South Africa has fared the worst with respect to waves of COVID-19 cases and deaths. All countries introduced strategies such as border closure, COVID-19 testing, physical distancing and face masks. Australia and Nigeria mobilised primary care, but the response was mostly public health and hospital-based in South Africa and Egypt. All countries rapidly adopted telehealth. All countries emphasised the critical importance of an integrated response between primary care and public health to conduct surveillance, diagnose cases through testing, provide community-based care unless hospitalisation is required and vaccinate the population to reduce infection spread.

Enfrentamento da Covid-19 na Atenção Primaria à Saúde: documentos normativos e mortalidade

“…No cenário internacional, estudo que avaliou o preparo e resposta da APS no enfrentamento da pandemia de Covid-19 da Austrália, Egito, África do Sul e Nigéria, identificou que a Nigéria foi o país que apresentou o menor registro no número de casos e óbitos por Covid-19, entretanto esse fato evidencia uma subnotificação, uma vez que a Nigéria apresentou elevada restrição em recursos de testagem, inferindo que o número de casos e óbitos por Covid-19 pode ser muito maior (Goodyear-Smith, et al, 2022).…”

Changes in General Practice use and costs with COVID-19 and telehealth initiatives

“…In other countries with rapidly increased access to population-wide telehealth, levels of ambulatory care were substantially reduced [7][8][9][10]14]. Throughout 2020, Australia was still attempting eradication of the COVID-19 virus and case numbers were comparatively low [1], which may explain these differences. Patterns of telehealth uptake by subpopulation are similar to that reported for from Australian primary care clinic data [13] and the US [7,[10][11][12].…”

How the VA is training the Next‐Generation workforce for learning health systems

“…In addition, a substantial amount of innovative health care research is happening beyond the traditional academic health system, through new public‐private models of health care (eg, CityBlock), 11 virtual care provision, and the expansion of health care to non‐clinical settings such as community organizations and schools (eg, Black Health Movement). 12 Finally, the COVID‐19 pandemic challenged current health care infrastructures 13 , 14 to respond more quickly to emerging public health crises, with accelerated adoption of virtual care, which also revealed significant gaps in the evidence base and data infrastructure.…”