Alternative global health security indexes for risk analysis of COVID-19

Chia Lin Chang, Michael McAleer*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

37 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Given the volume of research and discussion on the health, medical, economic, financial, political, and travel advisory aspects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the COVID-19 disease, it is essential to enquire if an outbreak of the epidemic might have been anticipated, given the well-documented history of SARS and MERS, among other infectious diseases. If various issues directly related to health security risks could have been predicted accurately, public health and medical contingency plans might have been prepared and activated in advance of an epidemic such as COVID-19. This paper evaluates an important source of health security, the Global Health Security Index (2019), which provided data before the discovery of COVID-19 in December 2019. Therefore, it is possible to evaluate how countries might have been prepared for a global epidemic, or pandemic, and acted accordingly in an effective and timely manner. The GHS index numerical scores are calculated as the arithmetic (AM), geometric (GM), and harmonic (HM) means of six categories, where AM uses equal weights for each category. The GHS Index scores are regressed on the numerical score rankings of the six categories to check if the use of equal weights of 0.167 in the calculation of the GHS Index using AM is justified, with GM and HM providing a check of the robustness of the arithmetic mean. The highest weights are determined to be around 0.244–0.246, while the lowest weights are around 0.186–0.187 for AM. The ordinal GHS Index is regressed on the ordinal rankings of the six categories to check for the optimal weights in the calculation of the ordinal Global Health Security (GHS) Index, where the highest weight is 0.368, while the lowest is 0.142, so the estimated results are wider apart than for the numerical score rankings. Overall, Rapid Response and Detection and Reporting have the largest impacts on the GHS Index score, whereas Risk Environment and Prevention have the smallest effects. The quantitative and qualitative results are different when GM and HM are used.

Original languageEnglish
Article number3161
JournalInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Volume17
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 May 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Funding: The first author (Chia-Lin Chang) acknowledges the financial support of the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan. The second author (Michael McAleer) wishes to thank the Australian Research Council and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Alternative global health security indexes for risk analysis of COVID-19'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this