Local, national and transnational public health responses and comparative clinical data across the NPA region

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The novel coronavirus, COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2), has had a very significant impact on the NPA region as a whole. However, this experience of the pandemic has been strikingly different in comparison to more densely populated regions and particularly urban settings. This is not apparent unless geographic specific breakdowns in terms of cases and deaths associated with COVID-19 are examined and interpreted from a public health and clinical perspective. Our clinical team, in collaboration with international colleagues, has been publishing daily comparative data across EU and NPA countries since the beginning of the outbreak on #COVIDWATCHIRL (averaging 30,000 impressions daily since March) and the web https://www.ul.ie/covid-home/covidwatchirl. In “COVIDWATCH-EU-NPA”, through a collaboration with clinical teams across the NPA region, we will provide regularly updated comparative data with clinical interpretation between those NPA and non-NPA regions on a country by country basis: COVIDWATCH-EU-NPA REPORT. We will also retrospectively map the public health responses and interventions used by different NPA regions and countries in the first wave of the COVID-19  and explore how these measures have influenced the individual pandemic curves of these countries: COVIDWATCH-EU-NPA RESPONSE. The first objective of any response to this pandemic must be to protect lives, but past that point the ultimate objective must be keep COVID-19 virus activity in society as low as possible and find a way for countries and regions to return safely to economic and social functioning. This is vital in order to minimise further collateral damage from COVID-19 for individuals and populations. The collaborative transnational data collection infrastructure COVIDWATCH-EU-NPA will deliver, has the potential to be vitally important to inform countries and regions as they try to navigate their way through the lifting of restrictions in the next phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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