Since COVID-19 first appeared in China in December 2019, it has quickly spread throughout the world, becoming one of the most devastating pandemics in recorded history in terms of morbidity and mortality. Compared to past pandemics, although there has been an increase in diagnostic and therapeutic interventions with the advances in the level of technological development and the experiences gained from similar past pandemics, all health systems, regardless of their level of development, have faced the negative effects of the pandemic. Governments have recognized a variety of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical intervention measures and have taken several decisions within the scope of these tactics to prevent or mitigate the devastation caused by these undesirable consequences. The goal of all these COVID-19 countermeasures has been to make sure that health systems can make the most of the resources they already have and, in turn, lessen the pandemic's effects on morbidity and mortality. This book will address several issues, including indicating the place of the COVID-19 pandemic in the history of the pandemic, assessing the diagnostic and therapeutic interventions implemented since the pandemic's inception, conducting epidemiological assessments of the pandemic at the national, regional, and global levels, assessing the tactics employed by health systems in the response processes, including non-pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical interventions, assessing the efficacy of the response processes through comparative analysis, and drawing political conclusions to effectively combat future pandemics. This book, written with a broad perspective, is derived from the doctoral dissertation titled “Assessing Countries' Efficiency in Fight Against COVID-19 by Data Envelopment Analysis and Machine Learning”. I hope that the book will be a useful resource for health professionals, researchers, decision-makers, and policymakers.

In the 100th anniversary of our Republic, I hope that this book, inspired by the ancient wisdom of our nation, will be a manifestation of the wish to reach a prosperous future full of science.

Dr. Faruk YILMAZ