Mari-Anne Härma, deputy director-general of the National Health Board (Terviseamet), told ERR that the aim of the paper is to document past health crises and provide recommendations for bracing for future outbreaks.

"More specifically, the document describes the situation in Estonia during the different waves of the pandemic, the measures implemented and their estimated impact, the reasons for implementing these measures, and the key lessons learned."

"This will be supplemented by a qualitative analysis based on expert, official and political assessments of the challenges the pandemic posed to the various actors, what went well and why, what went poorly and why and what should be done differently," Härma said.

Härma said that the document's drafting began in the summer of 2022, the writing began in November 2022 and the qualitative analysis portion began in April 2023.

Härma said the health agency's partner, Kantar Emor, conducted expert interviews with frontline pandemic management personnel during the height of the pandemic. "Different roles were represented in the sample, including government representatives, the Ministry of Social Affairs, the Government Office, the Research Council, hospital administrators, regional crisis teams, legal experts, communication specialists, and, of course, Health Board employees. Professor Irja Lutsar, with the participation of key stakeholders, will produce the descriptive section of the Covid-19 proceedings, as well as an evaluation of the most important lessons learned."

Härma said that the analysis document is presently being finalized and its material updated, and that it should be ready by the end of June, as planned. This will be followed by linguistic correction, partner input, pagination and formatting. The material will be made available to the public in August.

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