COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Impact and UK Government Policies

Explanation of COVID 19 policies:

COVID 19 is the new strain of corona virus disease that is spread across the entire world (Wenham et al. 2020). it poses highly adverse impact on the healthcare system. this is alarming and historic pandemic that has impacted the physical, mental, emotional and financial condition of people. The outbreak of this pandemic began in December, 2019 that poses severe financial and social challenges on the world. The UK government along with the devolved administrative bodies has proposed Coronavirus Action Plan that contains several policies. two of these important policies that are proposed by the UK government are as follows:

Improving global health by implementing Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI):

This initiative is taken by the UK government along with the World Health Organisation [WHO] with an intention to provide security and protection to people across the globe from the deadly impact of this pandemic (Jarvis et al. 2020). Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI) is the international partnership between the UK and neighbouring countries such as Japan, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy and US. The policy of global health security is developed to respond to the pandemic situation to provide effective mental and physical protection to people. under this policy the UK government as well as neighbouring governments emphasize on sharing clinical and scientific information internationally about clinical research and assessment on COVID 19. under this policy, local and national healthcare authorities in UK are directed to improve the overall risk assessment flamework in hospitals that will help health professionals to assess the immediate health impact on COVID 19 on elderly patients (Wenham et al. 2020). This policy highlights the importance of sharing scientific advices and information of clinical intervention internationally which is expected to be highly useful in developing innovative as well as relevant treatment and vaccination for eliminating adverse health impact on this pandemic. Under this policy, UK government ensure that health and social care organisations and pharmaceutical companies that are involved in controlling the outbreak of this pandemic would be provided with resources that are needed to do so. health and social care professionals are directed to ensure that continuous research and development are conducted in assessment and intervention of the COVID 19.

Ensure dignified treatment for elderly people:

• This policy has been proposed by the UK government to ensure that all citizen who are affected by COVID 19 will receive dignified treatment from health and social care professionals and staffs (Chetty et al. 2020). this policy intends to provide protection of people from any kind of discrimination, bias, abuse and harm while taking treatment for COVID 19 in hospital setting or in-home setting.
• The policy is developed with an intention to ensure that health and social care professionals, nurse and healthcare staffs will respect the interest, choice of treatment and preference of affected people while treating COVID 19 (Jarvis et al. 2020).
• The policy also ensures protection of elderly people affected by this pandemic from any kind of ill treatment, financial and social abuse and disrespect throughout their treatment process.

Impact on these policies on elderly population:

Improving global health by implementing GHSI:

• This policy is expected to be highly useful for elderly people residing in the UK to get immediate treatment and compassionate care from the health care professionals thereby minimising their life risk (Capano et al. 2020).
• This policy directs local and national healthcare authorities to ensure that elderly people (above 60) who are affected by COVID 19 will be provided with high quality care and treatment process to minimise their life risk (Mossa-Basha et al. 2020).
• This policy will improve the pain management and health assessment of COVID positive elderly patients by ensuring continuous research and development in health and social care system.
• Under this policies health and social care agencies will receive sufficient resource that they need to provide innovative and relevant treatment and protective care to vulnerable elderly patients.
• The policy aims to build collaborative relationship between elderly patients and health and social care professionals which assist the COVID 19 patients to receive empathetic care that is important for their emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing.

Dignified treatment for elderly people

• This policy enables elderly people who are COVID 19 positive to get proper respect and dignity throughout their treatment.
• This policy also ensures that autonomy, preference and choice of treatment of elderly patient would be respected by the health professionals while treating them (Miller et al. 2020).
• Through development of this policy the UK government ensures that elderly patients who are affected by COVID 19 would be protected from any kind of bias, abuse, harm, neglect and injustice through their treatment process.
• Health professional and health and social care staffs must ensure that informed consent is take in from elderly patients and their family members before starting any treatment and care delivery process.
• Healthcare authority needs to ensure that the rights, values and moral beliefs of elderly patients would be protected in hospitals. Elderly patients would receive the care that is highly relevant to their current mental and physical needs.

Limitations of these policies:

Improving global health by implementing Global Health Security Initiative (GHSI):

• Involvement of international healthcare agencies and government in assessment of COVID 19 condition enhances the chances of unhealthy competition among nations that interfere with the integrity and moral values of health and social care system (Capano et al. 2020)
• Partnership countries involved in GHSI often hide their individual pharmaceutical and clinical database to invent COVID 19 vaccine faster.
• Many policy makers think that this policy emphasize more on sharing scientific information about the COVID 19 internationally that sometimes have commercial purpose rather than having the purpose of minimising vulnerability of people to this pandemic.

Ensure dignified treatment for elderly people:

Many factors pose potential barriers to successful implementation of this policy in healthcare such as:

• Poor cooperation from elderly patients and their family members who do not give their informed consent to innovative treatment process (Wenham et al. 2020)
• Lack of resources needed to improve the overall healthcare infrastructure to provide high quality dignified treatment to COVID positive patients (elderly).
• Heavy workload, increasing number of COVID patients and lack of skilled staffs develop harsh behaviour and unfriendly approaches towards elderly patients in hospitals.

Recommendations

Following strategies can be taken by the government and health and social care agencies to make successful implementation of the overmentioned policies:

• Proper training and skill development of health and social care professionals as well as staffs.
• Improve the health care infrastructure in hospitals and healthcare centre to cope up with COVID 19 by ensuring continuous fund flow and improved resources management
• Improve international relationship with neighbouring countries that will assist UK government to make fair sharing of scientific database about COVID 19 treatment.
• UK government must support health and social care agencies to develop highly useful risk management framework that will provide high level of protection of COVID positive patients.
• Develop moral and ethical values in health professionals and health and social care staffs in terms of motivating them to implement the above-mentioned policies in better way.

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Reference list:

Brewer, M. and Gardiner, L., 2020. The initial impact of COVID-19 and policy responses on household incomes. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 36(Supplement_1), pp.S187-S199.

Capano, G., Howlett, M., Jarvis, D.S., Ramesh, M. and Goyal, N., 2020. Mobilizing policy (in) capacity to fight COVID-19: Understanding variations in state responses. Policy and Society, 39(3), pp.285-308.

Chetty, R., Friedman, J.N., Hendren, N. and Stepner, M., 2020. How did covid-19 and stabilization policies affect spending and employment? a new real-time economic tracker based on private sector data (No. w27431). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Jarvis, C.I., Van Zandvoort, K., Gimma, A., Prem, K., Klepac, P., Rubin, G.J. and Edmunds, W.J., 2020. Quantifying the impact of physical distance measures on the transmission of COVID-19 in the UK. BMC medicine, 18, pp.1-10.

Miller, A., Reandelar, M.J., Fasciglione, K., Roumenova, V., Li, Y. and Otazu, G.H., 2020. Correlation between universal BCG vaccination policy and reduced morbidity and mortality for COVID-19: an epidemiological study. MedRxiv.

Mossa-Basha, M., Medverd, J., Linnau, K., Lynch, J.B., Wener, M.H., Kicska, G., Staiger, T. and Sahani, D., 2020. Policies and guidelines for COVID-19 preparedness: experiences from the University of Washington. Radiology, p.201326.

Wenham, C., Smith, J. and Morgan, R., 2020. COVID-19: the gendered impacts of the outbreak. The Lancet, 395(10227), pp.846-848.