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. 2021 Aug 2:9:694705.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2021.694705. eCollection 2021.

Lessons Learnt From the COVID-19 Pandemic

Nils Chr Stenseth  1 , Guha Dharmarajan  2 , Ruiyun Li  1 , Zheng-Li Shi  3 , Ruifu Yang  4 , George F Gao  5   6
Affiliations

Lessons Learnt From the COVID-19 Pandemic

Nils Chr Stenseth et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, has been characterized by unprecedented rates of spatio-temporal spread. Here, we summarize the main events in the pandemic's timeline and evaluate what has been learnt by the public health community. We also discuss the implications for future public health policy and, specifically, the practice of epidemic control. We critically analyze this ongoing pandemic's timeline and contrast it with the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak. We identify specific areas (e.g., pathogen identification and initial reporting) wherein the international community learnt valuable lessons from the SARS outbreak. However, we also identify the key areas where international public health policy failed leading to the exponential spread of the pandemic. We outline a clear agenda for improved pandemic control in the future.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV; epidemiology; pandemic; public health.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Comparative timelines of two coronavirus epidemics. The relative timelines for SARS-CoV epidemic of 2002–2003 (top row) (–19) and SARS-CoV-2 pandemic of 2019 (bottom row) (–22), specifically highlighting dramatic differences in duration to notification of the WHO, identification of the pathogen and sequencing of the pathogen genome after the identification of the first case. The maps show the spatial extent of SARS-CoV-2 infection at three critical time points (23, 24).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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