Global Healthcare Resource Efficiency in the Management of Covid-19 Death and Infection Prevalence Rates

Bibliographic Data

ID22080464
AuthorsMarthinus C Breitenbach (0000-0003-4623-2379, University of Pretoria, corresponding author), Victor Ngobeni (0000-0002-0502-2634, National Treasury), Goodness C Aye (0000-0001-8696-7826, University of Pretoria)
Year2021
Volume9
Pages638481-638481
Publication date2021-04-29
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrontiers in Public Health (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2296-2565 • E-ISSN: 2296-2565
PublisherFrontiers Media SA (PUBLISHER • CH)
DOI10.3389/fpubh.2021.638481
PMID33996718
OpenAlexW3115671672
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited37

The scale of impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on society and the economy globally provides a strong incentive to thoroughly analyze the efficiency of healthcare systems in dealing with the current pandemic and to obtain lessons to prepare healthcare systems to be better prepared for future pandemics. In the absence of a proven vaccine or cure, non-pharmaceutical interventions including social distancing, testing and contact tracing, isolation, and wearing of masks are essential in the fight against the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. We use data envelopment analysis and data compiled from Worldometers and The World Bank to analyze how efficient the use of resources were to stabilize the rate of infections and minimize death rates in the top 36 countries that represented 90% of global infections and deaths out of 220 countries as of November 11, 2020. This is the first paper to model the technical efficiency of countries in managing the COVID-19 pandemic by modeling death rates and infection rates as undesirable outputs using the approach developed by You and Yan. We find that the average efficiency of global healthcare systems in managing the pandemic is very low, with only six efficient systems out of a total of 36 under the variable returns to scale assumption. This finding suggests that, holding constant the size of their healthcare systems (because countries cannot alter the size of a healthcare system in the short run), most of the sample countries showed low levels of efficiency during this time of managing the pandemic; instead it is suspected that most countries literally “threw” resources at fighting the pandemic, thereby probably raising inefficiency through wasted resource use

Biology · Business · Developing country · Disease · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Global health · Health care · Healthcare system · Incentive · Pandemic · Psychological intervention · Social distance · Efficiency Analysis Using DEA · Global Health Care Issues · Healthcare Systems and Reforms · Medicine · Nursing

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