Digital Health, Post COVID-19 Pandemic, and a Public Policy Perspective

Literature Review

The coronavirus pandemic, according to Itoh et al. (2020), started in the Hubei Province of China, and shortly after that, in late January, the World Health Organisation declared the illness to be a public health emergency of international significance due to the disease’s rapid spread. As a result, coronovirus was identified as a pandemic. According to Donthu and Gustafsson (2020), pandemics like COVID-19, which are brought on by mutations in common influenza viruses, are a repeated biological phenomenon, which according to Potter (2001), occurs naturally once every 50 years as a result of different viruses mixing and combining with one another. As such, it cannot be prevented from ever occurring again. The only thing the global community can do as a result is establish preventative measures so they can act more quickly when an epidemic arises (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020). The possible long-term effects of a pandemic are particularly difficult to predict because little research has been done on previous pandemics; even recent pandemics, like Ebola, have not been well examined to prepare the world for COVID-19 (de Pablos et al., 2022). Donthu and Guftafsson (2020). Thus, this incident demonstrated to the world the need for learning from previous pandemics, specifically the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, in order to understand the effects and possible preventive measures that can be developed to ensure a quick and effective response is possible in the future in ways that can lead to society not being greatly affected by any future pandemic.