Lithuania Social Briefing: the Second-Wave of COVID-19 Takes Lithuanian Society by Surprise Linas Eriksonas

ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 33, No. 3 (LT)

October 2020

Lithuania social briefing: The second-wave of COVID-19 takes Lithuanian society by surprise Linas Eriksonas

1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11.

+36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin

Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01

The second-wave of COVID-19 takes Lithuanian society by surprise

The second wave of COVID-19 which reached Lithuania at the beginning of October just before the parliamentary elections (the first round took place on 11 October) has left the society largely unprepared, even though already in April the predictions were made that the pandemic will hit with a new force in early autumn. The political campaigning for the elections has redirected the attention and the decreased readiness level of society-at-large and the government. During the month of October, the number of detected infection cases increased from 91 on 1 October to 1001 on 31 October, and the numbers continued to rise further with an even higher acceleration.

During the first wave of the pandemic, Lithuania showed determination and tackled the spread of virus quite efficiently and was even hailed along with other Baltic countries as being one of the best performers in terms of keeping the infection rates low. Yet the subsequent phase saw the opposite. More alarmingly, more than one thousand medical personnel got infected, which creates the risk that the health system can experience a shortage of staff if the infection rates continue to surge. As of the end of October, more than 40 thousand inhabitants were requested to stay in self-isolation but the government made little effort to enforce controls.

Below is an outline of the overall assessment of the initial efforts and the subsequent developments. It will consider the conditions and the barriers that might hinder the public health institutions to more rapidly tackle the pandemic long-term and the measures that are being taken to avert the situation getting out of control.

During the first wave of the pandemic Lithuania’s society has shown a great deal of solidarity and, after initial partisan bickering between the political actors, found a common ground to rally behind the government. The national quarantine was declared on 16 March and was in place for three months. As a result of joint efforts between government, business and civil society the virus was contained to a larger extent. The Sustainable Development Report prepared by Jeffrey Sachs and a team of independent experts from the Sustainable Development Solutions Network ranked Lithuania as 4th among the OECD countries in terms of effective management of COVID-19 health crisis (scored 0,75 out of the maximum value of 1) during that period. The initial success of Lithuania in tackling the pandemic was also recognized and widely publicised. Lithuania was even listed among the 20 safest destinations to travel in Europe after the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic.

Enterprise Lithuania reported that initially Lithuania’s businesses and public institutions were quick to come up with innovative solutions addressing the new needs such as registering and testing COVID-19 patients, coping with the increased flow of requests for testing, helping businesses find new niches in the lock-down environment, ensuring the continuous education of children and so on. For example, a COVID-19 monitoring and information system was developed, involving telecommunication providers, to ensure the integration and analysis of all COVID-19 related data. A hackathon was organized to develop further solutions such as a virtual communication robot to support the work of the call centres and an emotional help app was introduced to facilitate the accessibility of psychological support services for society. All these and many other initiatives during the first wave of COVID-19 helped to keep the minds of the population busy with short-term solutions which have worked for a time being.

However, the preparation for the successful and timely tackling of the upcoming wave has not been thorough as the society fell into a more relaxed mood during the summer. The short-term measures fizzled out as the quarantine was lifted at the beginning of June and the possibility of the return of the pandemic became less evident. The marketing campaign which optimistically presented Lithuania along with Latvia and Estonia as the “Baltic bubble” created an illusion that the country is largely immune from the reigning global pandemic.

The 2020 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) ranking provides some indications as concerning the level of preparedness of individual countries to address the public health issues such as COVID-19 within the wider context of the public governance in the relevant areas. SDG index ranks Lithuania, based on the performance of managing the first wave pandemic, as 4th, yet in terms of the overall SDG criteria, the country is only 36th out of 166 countries ranked. The SDG criteria, which cover the aspects related to the good health and well-being, show that Lithuania scores quite low on the subjective well-being (given the score of 6,3 out of the maximum value of 10). More importantly, Lithuania scores very poorly in terms of the gap in self-reported health status in general and the gap in self-reported health status by income.

The self-perceived health is reported by Eurostat and provides an overall assessment by respondents of their health in general. In the EU 28, 68.4 per cent of the population aged 16 and over perceived their health as very good or good in 2018. Among the EU Member States, the lowest share of inhabitants who perceived their health as very good or good were reported in Lithuania (44.0 per cent), Latvia (47.0 per cent) and Portugal (49.3 per cent). The same Eurostat survey from 2018 showed that 59.4 per cent of the population in the first income quintile group (the 20 per cent of the population with the lowest income) and 68.4 per cent in the third quintile group perceived their health as very good or good, compared with 78.7 per cent in the fifth

2 income quintile group (the 20 per cent of the population with the highest income). By far the largest difference in the share of the population reporting very good or good health between the populations in the highest and lowest income quintiles was observed in Latvia and Estonia (45.7 per cent and 42.8 per cent, respectively), and Lithuania (40 per cent).

The perceived health status of the population also reflects in the record-low mortality rate in Lithuania. Life expectancy has increased in recent years in Lithuania but remains among the lowest in the EU. Mortality rates from both preventable and treatable causes are well above the EU averages. Life expectancy at birth was 75.8 years in 2017, more than five years below the EU average (80.9 years), while the gender gap in life expectancy is almost double the EU average.

The 2019 State of the EU health report stated that a single health insurance fund provides care to nearly the entire population, but underfunding of the health system undermines accessibility and equity. Lithuania spends much less on health than the EU both in absolute terms and as a share of GDP. Besides, only two-thirds of current health expenditure is publicly financed, compared with 79 % in the EU. Further, the EU health report noted that the quality of outpatient and inpatient care is well below EU averages, although some initiatives to support improvements in quality of care have been undertaken in recent years.

The gap in self-reported health, as well as the actual statistics concerning the low level of life expectancy and poor health outcomes, point out towards the systemic deficiencies in the overall public health system, which when faced with the public health hazard over the longer period such as COVID-19 represents a major risk for society, economy and the state.

During the first wave of the pandemic, the government put a lot of effort into disseminating the efforts to combat the virus. Yet the parliamentary elections which coincided with the arrival second wave diverted the governmental officials, many of whom (including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health who led the electoral list of the governing party) have been involved in the election, from taking more robust actions.

At the same time, Lithuania’s strong performance in the initial stage of COVID-19 has been challenged by the series of the disinformation activities, which aimed to saw the distrust in the government by diminishing the real threat of the virus and to that end promoting all sorts of fake messages. A recent report by the Hudson Institute has analysed at length the disinformation activities which have been launched by various media outlets operating from Russia which spread various messages intending to weaken the solidarity between government, business and civil society in Lithuania when tackling the pandemic. Lithuania’s Ministry of

Defence recorded nearly 1,500 cases of disinformation related to COVID-19 between February and June 2020. The analysis has concluded that those activities “sought to make Lithuanian population view Russian policies as regarding CIVID-19 positively and distrust their own government’s response to the pandemic”. No assessment was provided as to the extent to which these messages were effective, yet certain doubts have generated some attention on social media. The National Public Health Centre under the Ministry of Health brought together the experts to discuss the causes for the spread of fake news about COVID-19; the experts argued for the need to step up efforts in running a more informed public information campaign, explaining the public how decisions are made, what are the scenarios, what are the expected impacts and threats ahead.

The new government which is under formation already announced their determination to change the way the pandemic is managed, including the strengthening top-down coordination at the Prime Minister’s office level, and communicated in society. Yet despite these short-term measures which could produce immediate results that are needed to lessen the adverse impacts of the pandemic on society and the economy, it remains to be seen how the long-term challenges will be addressed to improve the overall health situation in society.

References:

1. Government of the Republic of Lithuania, “Korona Stop: Relevant information about Coronavirus (COVID-19)”; https://koronastop.lrv.lt/en/#statistics-in-lithuania 2. Sachs, J., Schmidt-Traub, G., Kroll, C., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G., Woelm, F., “The Sustainable Development Goals and COVID-19: Sustainable Development Report 2020”, Cambridge Umniversity Press, 2020; https://www.sdgindex.org/ 3. Enterprise Lithuania, “5 Adaptable Innovative Solutions Lithuania Used to Overcome First Wave of COVID-19”; https://www.enterpriselithuania.com/en/news/5- adaptable-innovative-solutions-lithuania-used-overcome-first-wave-covid-19/ 4. Eurostat, “Self-perceived health statistics”, Nov. 2019; https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Self- perceived_health_statistics#Self-perceived_health 5. https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/419466/Country- Health-Profile-2019-Lithuania.pdf?ua=1 6. Hudson Institute, Richard Weitz, Aurimas Lukas Pieciukaitis, “Moscow’s Disinformation Offensive During COVID-19: The Case of Lithuania”, October 2020; https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.hudson.org/Weitz_Moscow's%20Disinformation%20Offensi ve%20During%20COVID-19.pdf