Nations’ Responses and Control Measures in Confrontation with the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak: A Rapid Review

The outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed a significant concern in many countries due to the rapid rate of transmission between humans. Taking advantage of the experience of the last epidemics in 2002 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and 2012 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), some regions of the world were well- prepared for the new outbreak. However, other countries needed to be adapted to the situation promptly. Many management strategies were established, and some restrictions were introduced in some regions. In this review, we aimed to determine countries’ public responses to the epidemic of COVID-19 and how they developed administrative approaches towards the outbreak.


brief background and objectives
At the end of December 2019, novel coronavirus-infected pneumonia cases were recognized in Wuhan City in China (1)(2)(3). These cases, with unspecified etiology, presented with symptoms of dyspnea, fever, dry cough, and bilateral lung infiltration on radiographs. The virus was named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and the disease was called COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO). In late January 2020, WHO announced the COVID-19 outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern in which countries with vulnerable healthcare facilities may be at an excessive hazard. The disease transmission may be disrupted by early diagnosis, social isolation, instantaneous therapy, and other control measures (1). This infection has imposed remarkable menaces on the global healthcare system in addition to potential risks in the economic sectors of countries all over the world. Since the disease does not have a particular treatment, there is a compelling need to find substitute means to dominate its expansion (4).
COVID-19 outbreak has led the public health officials of several countries to enact policies and manage the spread of the disease by employing different strategies, including encouraging people for self-isolating and quarantining. Therefore, in this rapid review, we sought to determine nations' responses to the COVID-19 outbreak and the strategies they have employed to control the spread of the disease.

Methods
In this study, the articles published from late 2019 to March 2020 were searched in MEDLINE, Scopus, and Embase databases. For a more concise investigation and due to the different nature of the topic, a different search strategy for each country was utilized in this study and some countries that reported a high number of confirmed cases in March 2020 were chosen. The countries included China, Italy, Iran, Spain, South Korea, Germany, France, United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, and Singapore. In addition to the published articles, the official government websites of some countries were also evaluated to acquire additional data about the recent national responses and management strategies.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria
The inclusion criteria were as follows: reporting of 1) public responses to COVID-19 outbreak or 2) control measures when they experienced the virus spread. The articles out of these scopes were excluded from the study.

Results
After the screening phase, 24 articles, in addition to the official government web pages of some countries, were selected for inclusion in the present review. In Table 1, we categorized public responses to the COVID-19 outbreak based on each country.

China
Reduced travel volume to and from China and its impact on the number of exported cases, the probability, and time delay of a major epidemic.
Anzai et al.   Singapore had the experience of the 2003 SARS outbreak and performed well due to its readiness.
Iran has launched a psychological assistance system for residents as well as establishing a selfmonitoring website for suspected cases of COVID-19 (11, 12). Considering the high rate of mortality and confirmed cases in Iran, it seems that stricter policies are needed to be Regarding management and investigative strategies, there has still been remarkable unfamiliarity for many countries. It is highly recommended that isolation and home quarantine would be held for symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, respectively. International cooperation would be beneficial in controlling the spread of the virus (40), and by screening the situation deeply, further context knowledge about the new virus would be gained, and nations can respond better (41).
The most known measures to control and prevent the disease include finding suspected cases and their contacts, blocking the transmission of the virus by isolation, and personal protection as well as managing the infection sources (42).

Conclusion
According to the management decisions of some governments on quarantining, social isolation, and flight suspension due to the severity of the virus spread, it is highly assured that this strategy would be a successful technique to confront the present pandemic. In addition to that, there are some prediction models(43) in which experts forecasted the positive impact of these plans on controlling COVID-19 infectious transmission. In the United Kingdom, there is also a public request on holding more robust measures of restrictions by the government. Although this policy can have a tremendous economic burden on countries, this issue may be solved by some approaches, including the allocation of financial support to riskier zones through worldwide health institutes and international banks. Overall, we advocate a probable global plan of forceful isolation by WHO, which would be an accomplishing approach in this critical era. This decision should be made promptly by globally responsible officials to conquer the pandemic.