Effective Contact Tracing System Minimizes COVID-19 Related Infections and Deaths: Policy Lessons to Reduce the Impact of Future Pandemic Diseases

One of the fundamental questions in the presence of Coronavirus Diseases 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic crisis and in general of new pandemic diseases is to design effective policy responses to reduce the impact in the initial phase of diffusion, when appropriate therapies and drugs lack. This study analyses a main case study given by Italy, one of the first European countries to be damaged of the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, this study focuses on health policy responses to the pandemic crisis across selected Italian regions that were the first areas to experience a rapid increase in confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19. The analysis of early regional health policies, from January to July 2020 (during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic), reveals that some regions have managed pandemic crisis with appropriate health policy responses based on: a) a timely and widespread testing of individuals, b) effective units of epidemiological investigation in a pervasive contact-tracing system to detect and isolate all infected people. This health policy response has reduced total deaths and negative effects of COVID-19 on health of people during the first pandemic wave, when are not available pharmaceutical interventions, such as vaccines and other antiviral drugs. This evidence in the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic provides important lessons to design an effective public health policy to constraint future pandemic waves driven by new variants and new viral agents, when appropriate drugs are not ready.