Open AccessThe Global Health Security Index is not predictive of coronavirus pandemic responses among Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries
Author(s) -
Enoch J. Abbey,
Banda A. A. Khalifa,
Modupe O. Oduwole,
Samuel K. Ayeh,
Richard Nudotor,
Emmanuella L. Salia,
Oluwatobi Lasisi,
Seth Bennett,
Hasiya Yusuf,
Allison L. Agwu,
Petros C. Karakousis
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0239398
Subject(s) - preparedness , pandemic , index (typography) , benchmarking , developing country , global health , business , covid-19 , economic growth , environmental health , medicine , development economics , economics , health care , disease , computer science , infectious disease (medical specialty) , marketing , management , pathology , world wide web
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has devastated many countries with ripple effects felt in various sectors of the global economy. In November 2019, the Global Health Security (GHS) Index was released as the first detailed assessment and benchmarking of 195 countries to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats. This paper presents the first comparison of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD countries' performance during the pandemic, with the pre-COVID-19 pandemic preparedness as determined by the GHS Index. Using a rank-based analysis, four indices were compared between select countries, including total cases, total deaths, recovery rate, and total tests performed, all standardized for comparison. Our findings suggest a discrepancy between the GHS index rating and the actual performance of countries during this pandemic, with an overestimation of the preparedness of some countries scoring highly on the GHS index and underestimation of the preparedness of other countries with relatively lower scores on the GHS index.