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The investigation goal is the analysis of the relation between healthcare expenditures and other resources, and COVID-19 fatality rates among European countries to design effective health policies for crisis management.

Research methodology is based on descriptive statistics and various parametric methods, also including a linear model of regression to analyze basic relationships of variables under study.

Results show that a lower COVID-19 fatality rate is associated with higher levels of health expenditure (% GDP), of healthcare expenditure per capita, health expenditure in preventive care (% GDP), hospitals per million inhabitants, physicians, nurses, hospital beds and curative acute care beds per 1,000 inhabitants. Regression analysis shows that a 1% increase in healthcare expenditures per capita of countries, it reduces the level of COVID-19 fatality rate by 0.74%. In fact, many countries in Eastern Europe with low healthcare expenditures per capita in 2019 (e.g., Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Slovakia, Lithuania, etc.), they have experienced high COVID-19 fatality rates. Instead, a lot of countries in Western Europe, with high healthcare expenditures per capita, such as Germany, Denmark, Austria, and the Netherlands, they had resilient health systems to face pandemic crisis and lower COVID-19 fatality rates.

These findings suggest strategies of systematic and continuous investments in healthcare, medical technologies, and ICT infrastructures to support effective health policy of crisis management in countries to face future pandemic crisis and other emergencies in society.

The explanation of critical role of high health expenditure (% GDP) and healthcare expenditure per capita to support robust health systems that bolster the resilience in nations to face health emergencies and worldwide crises.

The goal of this study is to analyze the relationship between public governance and COVID-19 vaccinations during early 2021 to assess the preparedness of countries to timely policy responses to cope with pandemic crises.

This global study elaborates descriptive statistics, correlations, regression analyses and Independent Samples T-Test on 112 countries, comparing those with high/low level of governance, to determine whether statistical evidence supports the hypothesis that good governance can improve the timely administration of vaccines.

Bivariate correlation reveals that doses of vaccines administered × 100 inhabitants have a high positive association with the General Index of Governance (r = 0.58, p-value <0.01). The result is confirmed by partial correlation (controlling density of population per km²): r = 0.584, p-value <0.001. The coefficient of regression in the models also indicates that an increase in the General Index of Governance improves the expected administration of doses of COVID-19 vaccines (p-value <0.001).

Although this study has provided interesting results that are, of course, tentative, it has several limitations. First, a limitation is the lack of data in several countries. Second, not all the possible confounding factors that affect the vaccination against COVID-19 are investigated, such as country-specific health investments and expenditures, and these aspects should be examined in the future development of this research. A third limit is related to the measurement of governance through the World Governance Indicators, which are based only on perceptions and can be biased by different socio-economic factors.

The identification of factors determining the timely vaccinations may help to design best practices of health policy for improving the resilience of countries to face pandemic crises.

The improvement of preparedness of countries through good governance can foster a rapid rollout of vaccinations to cope with pandemic threats and the negative effects of their socio-economic impact.

This study presents a global analysis of the role of public governance for timely vaccinations to face pandemic crises in society.