Health planning and crisis management during the first wave of the pandemic. The case of Italy and Poland. Comparative study

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an unprecedented global public health crisis. The synergy between numerous factors, including the relative ease of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, the inability to identify and contain the first COVID-19 outbreaks, as well as the difficulty in balancing the political-economic aspects with public health, has greatly shaken the world’s order, impacting various domains: starting with health and work, ending with global chains and the distribution of power. The pandemic, although a sort of shock to the world, cannot be considered an unforeseen phenomenon. The previous crises, attributable to SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and MERS, as well as the industry experts had long highlighted the risks of such an event and the need to implement measures to contain and mitigate the associated effects. Yet, these warnings went largely unheeded and the world was not ready to react effectively. In the upcoming months, after the terrible experience with the new virus, the world will have to restructure its approach towards the protection and promotion of health. Without such a shift, global recovery from the COVID-19 crisis will remain weak, with fragile domestic and international public healthcare systems serving as shields. This research was of problem-oriented nature and was conducted in order to understand the exact issue, which has affected the world globally, contributing to the failure of the economic systems of many countries, the tragedies of countless families, the bankruptcies of many companies or the need to change the business models and the worldwide approach to private and professional life. Since the study has been written by two Authors representing completely different research areas: Daniela La Foresta - geography, Anna Dziadkiewicz - management and quality science, different views on the same issues have been presented. In the first part, more emphasis has been put on the political and legal aspects, in the second part - on the economic and social challenges. The work has therefore been divided into two parts: a description of the situation during the first wave of the pandemic in Italy and Poland, with particular emphasis on the political, the legal, the economic and the social issues. In the ‘Italian’ part, the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the first months since the beginning of the outbreak was analyzed. Regions and provinces were compared in terms of territorial immunity to the virus. Statistics are also presented on the mobility of Italian citizens during the state of emergency and the resulting threats observed in major urban centers. The following section presents the national healthcare system and the Italian public healthcare model. In the last chapter of this section, contextual factors are indicated, especially the socio-demographic perspective. The second part of the study is, in a way, a reflection of the issues discussed, but presented on the example of Poland. The Poles’ knowledge and preparation before the outbreak of the pandemic has been indicated. Next, the activities of the Polish services during the state of epidemic threat have been outlined. The first chapter has been concluded with a presentation of the stages of the restriction lifting and a broad description of one of the most threatened Polish regions - Silesia. The factors analyzed here are pertain to the much higher number of infection and death cases than in other regions of Poland. The next chapter presents the Polish health information system and the indicators used by the healthcare system in relation to epidemiological situations. The last chapter analyzes the Poles’ attitudes towards the pandemic, in the socio-cultural and the economic context. The role of the social media, as the most popular form of communication during the pandemic, has also been extensively described. To conclude, inferences were made about the challenges to be faced by Poles and the Polish healthcare system in the inevitable second wave of the coronavirus. This change of approach assumes a thorough understanding of what has happened. This work aims to evaluate, through a territorial comparison of two European countries, i.e. Poland and Italy, the impact of the law enforcement policies, the social attitudes, as well as the ways of dealing with the crisis with regard to different spheres of life – economic, educational, medical, cultural and worldview. From this perspective, the territorial response to the health crisis as well as the effectiveness of the different health planning models implemented in various regions were the subject of analysis. The timing of the decisions made resulted in violation of the rules and new distribution of power. Many of these innovations addressed the acute phase of the crisis only, yet some of these changes will continue. Humanity has suffered and faced numerous states of epidemic, which often changed the course of events, not always with negative impact. These effects are indeed often positive, in terms of invalidating the existing conventions as well as in the field of scientific innovation, human solidarity, economic and social progress.