Public Health in Europe during the Covid-19 Emergency
Ubaldo Comite

Abstract
In line with what has happened in other sectors of the Public Administration, where the change process has, as an objective, the search for efficiency and efficacy, in Italy, the awareness that an efficient, effective and equal healthcare service is a major success factor for the socio-economic development of each is growing. The healthcare system is at the centre of great attention, having to demonstrate the adequate use of constantly decreasing available resources against a growing healthcare demand. This entails an incentive oriented toward the ability to improve services. Such need has been consolidating in the overall corporatization process, leading to a growing orientation toward performance and to the use of programming tools. In this context must be considered the diseases characterized by the length of the healthcare assistance plan and high complexities in terms of treatments and complications. Such diseases are relevant in epidemiological terms and also in terms of resources employed and improvement potential from the point of view of intervention policies, of public healthcare offer and of efficiency. The above may refer to the healthcare emergency still in place following the spread of the COVID-19 virus, employing an enormous amount of resources from both a human and a financial point of view. SARS-CoV-2, a serious threat to sustainable development prospects, is spreading within countries at varying speeds, among other things depending on their population density, behavioural responses, cultural factors, personal hygiene practices and habits. This has led to significant variation in countries’ policy responses aimed at stemming the proliferation of the virus. Using crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis, we conducted a comparative study at the European level to study the performance of different combinations of COVID-19 containment measures along with the response speeds. A set of configurations for two different scenarios (above- and below-median death rates) helps to illustrate how specific containment measures in each examined European country are related to the number of deaths. The main observation arising from the analysis is that the speed of response along with the decision to suspend international flights might determine the epidemic outbreak’s impact on fatality. The results also imply that several different combinations of containment measures are associated with death rates across Europe. The outcome of this analysis can assist in identifying which set of containment measures in the event of an epidemic outbreak is beneficial/detrimental.This work considers combining theoretical considerations and empirical evidence related to the treatment of COVID-19, within what it is the success of public health measures in Europe during the COVID-19 emergency.

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