Amid uncertainty, cooperation is key to counter this fast-moving deadly COVID-19 that has an uncertain clinical profile, adding to the difficulty to predict which direction COVID-19 outbreak will take, as such, it will stretch out and challenge any health system, therefore, it is critical to bring together experts and policy makers to share perspective and insight, developing framework to accelerate improvement to health system efficiency and preparedness against COVID-19 outbreak, moreover, as COVID-19 spreads around the world, scientists are moving at record speed to find a treatment against COVID-19, at the same time, COVID-19 has the world’s business system in a spin, including business interruption and supply chain disruptions, affecting economic and market across geographies and industries, this highlights the urgency to take the necessary measures to enhance cooperation in data sharing and developing models for understanding the early stages of transmission and extrapolation to future events, including the ability to map out the eventual spread and severity of COVID-19, all this is geared as an invaluable information to implement travel restrictions, allocate health care resources as well as assessing the effectiveness of public health interventions on containment, while it offers assurance for businesses to remain focus to deal with the impact and losses generated from COVID-19 outbreak and prepare for upturn
China is dealing with an outbreak of a virus known formally as COVID-19. COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China. Latest data shows COVID-19 continue its spread beyond the borders of China. On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). COVID-19 outbreak can challenge any health system. Although health systems are generally stronger now and have more technologies to trace and contain outbreaks, there are also deep and complicated challenges that make swift, coordinated COVID-19 disease response difficult even in the modern era. This highlights the need for the international communities to share information, scientific expertise and cooperation. As such, this conference provides a platform to bring together experts and policy makers to share perspective and insight, developing framework to accelerate improvement to health system efficiency and preparedness against a major COVID-19 outbreak. Moreover, as scientists around the world are moving at record speed to find a treatment against COVID-19, at the same time, serious implications emerge, including business interruption and supply chain disruptions, affecting economic and market across geographies and industries. With the potential impact of this fast-moving, deadly virus looms ahead, coupled with an inevitable margin of error that make it difficult to predict the direction COVID-19 outbreak will take, the way forward remains the need for cooperation in data sharing and a review of models in science and technology to give a far better idea of COVID-19’s eventual spread and severity, including mapping out where and how the disease will spread next in order to map out invaluable information to implement travel restrictions, allocate health care resources as well as assessing the effectiveness of public health interventions on containment. Leveraging from this momentum, scientists are now able to predict the path of COVID-19 will take. In the interim, it offers assurance for businesses to remain focus to deal with the impact and losses generated from COVID-19 outbreak, while the world at large still awaiting for the new miracle drug to be discovered by scientists to completely wipe-out COVID-19 outbreak.