Table 3.

Common approaches used to maintain essential services with country examples.

Approach	Country examples
Separate (confirmed and suspected) COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 patients	•Offered only maternal and child consultations and compulsory vaccinations without admitting other patients on Tuesdays and Thursdays (Bulgaria) •Established “infection consultation hours” in GP practices for (suspected) COVID-19 patients (Germany)
Increase the use of virtual treatments and digital services	•Received regular prescriptions on their mobile device, via text message or e-mail (Greece) •Launched a total of 174 initiatives between March 1st and June 11th 2020 to enhance the delivery of services through digital technology, of which 50 are COVID-19-specific, whereas others are dedicated to diabetology, cardiology, general medicine, oncology, neurology and psychology (Italy) •Restricted primary care physician consultations to telephone or teleconsultation (Luxembourg)
Reduce capacity of waiting areas	•Recommended no more than 3 people in the waiting room at one time (Czech Republic) •Closed down waiting rooms in some specific cases (Spain)
Prioritize treatments	•Created an ‘urgency list’ of procedures to prioritize when scaling up regular hospital care (the Netherlands) •Adopted different criteria to prioritize surgery in five potential scenarios depending on the epidemiological situation (Spain)
Provide staff with increased testing	•Tested all health workers after the end of the lockdown in the country on May 11th 2020 (France) •Postponed all hospital operations and redirected new patients to other hospitals in the region after detecting a COVID-19 outbreak among health personnel at a University Hospital's intensive care unit on September 29th 2020 (Norway)
Use private sector capacity	•Used the accident and emergency departments of private hospitals to treat urgent cases (Cyprus) •Conducted ‘block booking’ by the NHS of capacity from private acute hospitals, including their outpatient capacity, to help maintain essential services and address backlogs (England)