Allaham, S;
Demel, I;
Nur, I;
Abu Salim, FN;
Manikam, L;
(2021)
The Impact of United Kingdom and Malaysia's Inherent Health Systems on Their COVID‐19 Responses: A Comparison of Containment Strategies.
World Medical & Health Policy
, Article wmh3.412. 10.1002/wmh3.412.
(In press).
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Abstract
In March 2020, the outbreak of COVID‐19 was officially declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Given the novelty of the virus, and hence, lack of official guidance on effective containment strategies, individual countries opted for different containment approaches ranging from herd immunity to strict lockdown. The opposing strategies followed by the United Kingdom and its former colony, Malaysia, stand exemplary for this. Real‐time polymerase chain reaction was implemented for testing in both counties. Malaysia acted with strict quarantining rules and infection surveillance. The United Kingdom followed an initially lenient, herd‐immunity approach with strict lockdown only enforced weeks later. Although based on the same health‐care structure historically, Malaysia developed a more unified health system compared with the United Kingdom. We suggest that this more centralized structure could be one possible explanation for why Malaysia was able to react in a more timely and efficient manner, despite its closer geographic proximity to China. We further explore how the differences in testing and quarantining strategy, as well as political situation and societal compliance could account for the discrepancy in the United Kingdom's versus Malaysia's relative success of COVID‐19 containment.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The Impact of United Kingdom and Malaysia's Inherent Health Systems on Their COVID‐19 Responses: A Comparison of Containment Strategies |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1002/wmh3.412 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.412 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2021 The Authors. World Medical & Health Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Policy Studies Organization. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | COVID‐19, community spread, inherent health system, pandemic response, public health |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Epidemiology and Public Health |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10128101 |
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