Local Healthcare Preparedness and Alert Systems—How to Prevent Future Pandemics?

 Dear Colleagues, 

Infectious diseases have become relevant in recent years following the COVID-19 pandemic and the increasing trend of diseases related to antibiotic resistance. COVID-19 had a major impact on the healthcare systems of different countries. However, there is currently a lack of information on the resilience potential of healthcare systems, as it is unclear whether healthcare activities have returned to the same level of efficiency and effectiveness that they had before. Furthermore, it is not fully understood what pro-active alarm systems have been developed in different countries, as well as national or local pandemic plans, recommended by international organisations such as the WHO and OECD.

With this knowledge gap, this Special Issue aims to share updated information on the topic in order to identify three elements that are useful for the entire scientific community. The first one is to highlight the resilience of local healthcare systems, which should hopefully show a return to a level of performance similar to the pre-pandemic phase. The second one is to highlight the infectious diseases alert systems of the different settings in order to share innovative alerting methods. The third and final point is studying the models used and the way in which the different local pandemic plans have been set in order to understand how different healthcare systems have implemented specific plans at the local level.

This Special Issue could also be useful in sharing important information with all the stakeholders in the field of infectious disease prevention and improving the resilience of healthcare systems in the event of future pandemics. Research articles, as well as reviews and expert opinions, are welcome and will be carefully assessed.

Dr. Giuseppe Stirparo
Dr. Alberto Arnedo-Pena
Guest Editors

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• infectious diseases
• epidemiology
• COVID-19
• healthcare systems
• vaccination
• surveillance
• transmission
• chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) hazards