Abstract
More than 2 years has passed since the pandemic was declared in 2019 due to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which was later declared to be the pathogen causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). During this time, many healthcare systems faced numerous challenges to control the high morbidity and mortality of the disease. Unlike previous pandemics, the actions against this pandemic started quickly on both the global and country levels. These actions were, scientifically, to study the virus as well as transmission process and to develop medications and vaccines against it. Also, we had to protect people from transmission by knowing how best to apply precautionary methods. However, there were some unexpected negative consequences of the pandemic and one of those the World Health Organization (WHO) called ‘infodemic’. This term infodemic refers to the manipulation of a population’s behavior in the assessment of information (or, more accurately, lack of assessment) related to the use of medications, particularly vaccines. Unfortunately, even with positive development in science, there was limited and often contradictory amount of information on the safety and efficacy profile of drugs and vaccines. Therefore, this made it harder for public health agencies to determine the impact of the incidence of adverse reactions and events associated with interventions such as vaccines. Hence, risk communication needs to be emphasized during any pandemic, as ignoring risk communications to different stakeholders could undermine all well-intended therapeutic interventions. Given this, it is important that the different stakeholders involved (health authorities, societies, healthcare professionals, etc.) assess the different behavioral patterns within their respective populations and propose appropriate strategies to act. Such an approach complement having risk management and communication plans for this and future pandemics. The aim of this article is to explore how information management, risk management, and risk communication during the pandemic can provide valuable lessons for the future.
Plain language summary
More than 2 years have gone by since the pandemic was declared in 2019 due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Many challenges have been confronted by the healthcare system during this time to control the high impact of this disease. This pandemic, unlike others that humanity has faced, is characterized by a special feature: today, we have an enormous amount of information only a click away. This situation has been of great benefit to humanity and has allowed the development of science; nevertheless, misinformation (infodemics) has been a major problem, which has revealed the behavior of the population regarding the evaluation of information (or better, lack of assessment) related to the use of medications and particularly of vaccines. Given this, it is important that the different people involved (health authorities, societies, healthcare professionals, etc.) assess the behavior and propose appropriate strategies to act and have plans for this and future pandemics. This article intends to explore from the authors’ perspective how information management, risk management, and risk communication during the pandemic can provide valuable lessons for the future.
Introduction
More than 2 years have gone by since the pandemic was declared in 2019 due to the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which was later declared to be the pathogen causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). As with many other pandemics, healthcare systems have faced numerous challenges in order to control the high morbidity and mortality of this disease, while other social phenomena have emerged to aggravate the already overwhelmingly chaotic situation. By April 2022, there were more than 499 million COVID-19 cases with more than 6 million deaths having been registered. 1 The first case was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on 31 December 2019. 2 Throughout this time, there have been multiple attempts to find a definitive cure for the disease. Many drugs have been evaluated as potential treatments for COVID-19; however, few have proven efficacy and until the development of vaccines, no satisfactory results had been obtained.
While clinical studies were being conducted, a growing phenomenon in the community was developing at the same rate (or faster) than the infection itself. In recent years, one of the most powerful opponents of scientific evidence has been misinformation in the community. Because of the widespread availability of social media, online information, and other forms of communication, the phenomenon of disinformation has become a major concern for the scientific community and governments, even more so than in other health emergencies. This situation has meant that today, more than ever, risk management and risk communication have become a relevant area of activity for the different actors involved in the management and control of the pandemic: regulatory agencies, scientists, governments, and others. 3
One of the examples of spreading the information very widely is the use of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat patients with COVID-19. 4 The drug was thought to be effective against COVID-19 based on study that has major weaknesses and limitations. The lead author of the study was delivering inaccurate information about the study and how ‘magic’ the drug was to treat patients with COVID-19. Unfortunately, there were many risks associated with the drug in some people who were trying to take either chloroquine or HCQ as prophylaxis against COVID-19. This is all because of communicating this information by those who are not capable of risk communications. 5
Sending wrong and inaccurate information not only affects people’s health, but it is also economically wasteful as the WHO conducted clinical trials to obtain robust data about the inefficacy of the drug against COVID-19 after examining information from the initial studies. 6
Similarly, this has also occurred with vaccine worlds since new COVID-19 vaccines came into the market, namely Pfizer-BionTech and AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccines. People were hesitant to take the vaccines because they misunderstood the concept of herd immunity since it was discussed a lot in the media including social media. 7 This misinformation led some institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to specify pages to correct this information. 8
Furthermore, misleading information about the vaccine safety was also a big issue in many countries including Australia. The Therapeutic Goods Administration had to publish a media release in order to correct misleading information by a famous radio program in Australia. That was questioning the safety of vaccines and claiming that these vaccines are leading to many cases of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS). 9
There are many examples of communicating the information (either benefits or risks) in an inaccurate way that made the health bodies ensure to have specific methods of communicating with the public to correct the information. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) also did that to fight the misinformation and assure the importance of risk communication in the area of medicines and vaccines. 10
Therefore, in this article, we aim to discuss how information management, risk management, and risk communication during the pandemic can provide valuable lessons for the future to assure that all stakeholders focus on risk communication more during any pandemic.
Misinformation during pandemic
No one was prepared for this COVID-19 pandemic, uncertainty was and continues being the state of the world. Information was provided on a daily basis and used as quickly as possible; many healthcare professionals (HCPs) attempted to comprehend the situation and act in the best way to save as many lives as possible; however, not all HCPs or the community had the necessary evidence to make accurate decisions. This situation was aggravated as those communicating information about these risks did not have the necessary expertise in risk communication in the context of the wider pandemic.
Because it is possible for many of us to access information in an easy, random, and uncontrolled way, this allows misinformation to propagate from those sources which do not provide quality information and, who in many cases, seek to promote their own interests over the common good. According to the Lancet Infectious Diseases, ‘Fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories have become prevalent in the age of social media and have skyrocketed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic’. 11
The use of social media and the potential to distribute information so widely and expeditiously increases the risk of fake news being spread from one nation to another in a question of seconds and being accepted as true without critical analysis. In addition, the involvement of some leaders (particularly in politics) has led to uncertainty among the population and has impacted their intake behavior, such as the use of medicines that are believed to prevent COVID.
In this regard, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO, stated at the Munich Safety Conference 2020: ‘We’re not just fighting a pandemic; we’re fighting an infodemic’. 12 An infodemic is too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak. It causes confusion and risk-taking behaviors that can harm health. It also leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response. 13 Information about the COVID-19 pandemic has spread widely. Although some of the information was accurate, a significant part of it was false. This triggered an ‘infodemic’, so that waves of misinformation and rumors about the pandemic have overwhelmed the media and information domain. 14
Infodemic management is a human-centered, data-driven, evidence-based practice that strengthens public health systems to support behavior change, including during public health emergencies. It is a modern practice because of the rapid evolution of different media, never previously seen during the unfolding of a pandemic. 15
During the pandemic period, disinformation is not limited to social media and non-scientific media; indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that even world-renowned scientific publications are susceptible to misinformation. In a concern of rapid dissemination of information in a context of health emergency, some scientific journals have published the results of studies which have been found not to meet epidemiological or ethical standards. For example, observational studies reporting that the drug ‘hydroxychloroquine’ was linked to severe adverse events and mortality among patients with COVID-19 were found to be based on unsourced data, and the papers had to be retracted. 16
Topics of misinformation
Due to uncertainty, there are many topics on which information has not been properly verified, for example:
Origin of the disease and diagnosis;
Medication for prevention (before vaccine development) or early treatment and prevention of severe cases: ivermectin, HCQ, and chlorine dioxide;
Treatment protocols for moderate and severe cases: antibiotics (azithromycin);
Development of vaccines (stages of production and clinical research): short way of research and authorization;
Vaccine safety and adverse events: risk over benefit.
One specific and very interesting case of misinformation was the promotion of HCQ/chloroquine, despite its unproven efficiency as prevention against the severe COVID-19 disease. Politics talk regarding the HCQ/chloroquine generated a large volume and diversity of misinformation topics with high levels of user interaction.15,17 This misinformation impacted public health, particularly the rational use of drugs during the pandemic. Indeed, reports of adverse events related to the use of HCQ have increased, with several countries reporting cases of poisonings. The outcome of this misinformation was the indiscriminate use of this medicine even when the potentially serious adverse effects were well known and its place in Covid therapeutics was not determinate. 17
In addition, the efficacy and safety of vaccines is one of the most widely controversial issues; some groups of people consider COVID-19 vaccines as unsafe and claim to be anti-vaccinationists. They use the argument that COVID-19 vaccines were developed extremely fast (fast tracked) and that they are new and innovative vaccines, in particular mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) vaccines. On social media, arguments against the vaccines abound: ‘They’re ineffective against the Delta variant’, ‘mRNA vaccines cause cancer’, or ‘the adverse events are worse than COVID-19 itself’. This very small proportion of the population is disseminating misinformation about vaccines mostly in social media which drives from beliefs and false conceptions about medical decisions.
The vaccine pharmacovigilance (PV) strategies that are implemented in several countries have shown that the benefit risk balance for COVID-19 vaccines is highly positive and the use of these vaccines is as safe as any other vaccination or drug. Providing official PV data and developing a proper communication plan with specific messages for the target populations are effective ways of remedying misinformation.
How to act in this situation?
Some specific recommendations have been given from authorities and societies about how to proceed in this situation, including:18,19
Verify the information. It is difficult to analyze the primary source of any investigation to understand whether the information is real or not, but in general terms the best way is to be confident of the sources well established such as WHO, national health ministries, peer-reviewed journals, and scientific societies.
Do not share information if you have not verified the authenticity or source and confirmed with other sources.
Have critical thinking and analysis of data, verified by the author’s interests.
Teach the general community to have the possibility to doubt and use tools to check if they are reading fake news.
If you are a scientific society or part of the government, analyze the information which is commonly shared in your community and communicate with evidence-based information.
Risk communication of PV in COVID-19
Infodemic and health behavior model
The world has moved on from the last pandemic, and the communications channel has also developed. It is becoming easy to reach a large number of populations through social media. Unfortunately, the healthcare stakeholders who informed about COVID-19 were attempting to deal with two major challenges in the world, the pandemic and the infodemic.
The EPI-WIN (WHO Information Network for Epidemics) was established by the WHO in order to launch a series of amplifiers to unify tailored information and share it with specific groups. But the use of social media platforms was a substantial health challenge, as they guided the public and patients toward misinformation, and some unrealistic opinions from some experts in the world. 20
The pharmaceutical industry with the regulatory agencies and health organizations were not prepared enough to overcome the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Fundamentally, the plans for the communication crisis were not well equipped or regularly updated to adequately manage the changing needs from the pandemic. This led to a failure in communicating accurate information to the public on time with full transparency and accuracy.
Additionally, the infodemic moved faster and broader than the communication of EPI-WIN, to disseminate rumors and false news impacting the decisions of the public, patients, and their families, thereby enhancing uncertainty and confusion. 20
There was insufficient cooperation between pharma companies and government authorities on providing information regarding virus management options. The public received different perspectives on treatment options which left them in a state of anxiety and fear about the possible outcomes of the treatment. 21
The trust between the public and EPI-WIN was a significant challenge; in general, the public needs trusted information to make decisions to relieve them from panic and confusion. 21
Risk communications during COVID-19 was in a disengaged one-way manner model. It failed to measure and receive the outcome of the communication. The poor engagement between all relevant stakeholders in making decisions about the efficacy and safety of vaccines was one of the main reasons for the apprehensive views of those who opposed mainstream scientific opinion coupled with an undermining of democratic processes and ethical use of the media. 15
This disengagement led to various mistrust surrounding the virus treatments, and it created uncertainty about the safety of the vaccines, which has impacted the behavior and decisions of the public toward the acceptance of vaccines negatively. 22
History of vaccination issues after widespread use of vaccines contributed to increasing concerns about getting a vaccine. This disengagement led to a variable amount of mistrust surrounding antiviral therapies and fueled uncertainty about the safety of vaccines which in turn negatively impacted the behavior and decisions of the public toward vaccine uptake. 22
The lack of appropriate communication by the manufacturers has impacted the Health Belief Model (HBM) that is used by the public during the COVID-19 crisis. 23
In HBM, the public’s beliefs on the severity and susceptibility of the disease along with the benefits and risk of the vaccine had been directed by infodemic. Some of the patients who do not believe in the risk and the complications of the virus will give more attention to false news. 23
The public’s trust in the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as public health transparency, had been harmed by the infodemic and the manufacturers’ lack of information. 22 Furthermore, the difficulty in distinguishing between virus and vaccine side effects has aided rumors on social media platforms in deceiving the public.
It is very important to cooperate and establish an opened communication canal between the bigger organizations, that is, WHO and the authorities with the manufacturers, to standardize the information before it reaches the public.
Risk communication of COVID-19 vaccines
There are three tiers that describe how PV is essential in maximizing the benefits and controlling the risks of medicines and vaccines. These tiers are case management, signal management, and benefit–risk management. To ensure adequate risk control in the use of medicines, particularly vaccines, a series of knowledge and technical skills are required. However, soft skills such as teamwork, collaboration, conflict resolution, and negotiation are the crucial skills for the mitigation and communication and have more impact on reducing patient risks and improving patient outcomes. 24
The Brighton Collaboration has created standard templates for benefit risk assessment of vaccine technologies as part of the Safety Platform for Emergency vACcines (SPEAC) project that has been financed by Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). The aim of the project was to harmonize the safety of candidate vaccines, including the main COVID-19 platforms (nucleic acid, protein, viral vector, inactivated viral, and live-attenuated viral vaccines). The Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS) of the WHO has suggested that any study of the safety of new vaccines be based on these templates, as they provide a structured approach to evaluate safety. 25
The aim of vaccine safety communication should be to empower people to make evidence-based COVID-19 vaccination decisions. All communication strategies should build trust and confidence in health authorities and vaccine vendors. Also, timely, accurate, and reliable information about the safety of COVID-19 vaccination should be made accessible through trustworthy communication channels and allow people to raise questions and have their concerns addressed. 25 Formative research that elucidates the information deficits, attitudes, beliefs, health perceptions, and demographic variables that lead to expected COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy is required for effective public communication. 26
Coordination of information sharing, and dissemination will be aided by collaborations with other vaccination safety stakeholders. Creating a communications plan, which includes tasks like establishing responsibilities, nominating spokespeople, defining audiences or demographic groups, and producing materials, will aid in scenario preparation and mitigation. 27
Different forms of safety concerns will necessitate different actions, which may include precaution, risk minimization measures, or distributing reassuring information, depending on the available evidence. Vaccine communication strategies related to safety are more likely to succeed if they are integrated with other community health needs at the local level. As a result, the vaccine type and situation-specific vaccine safety communication plans (VacSCPs) must be tailored to a certain vaccine type and a specific local circumstance at a specific time. 28
Understanding and assessing risk
Understanding the mental shortcuts people use and the insights they bring to risk assessment is critical for effective risk communication. Individuals use heuristics to process risk information. These are mental shortcuts that help them make fast decisions when confronted with tremendous quantities of data. People’s tendency to overestimate the ‘compression’ of low-probability events, for example, can make it difficult to convey a sense of scale when discussing a rare event such as TTS. 29
Similarly, if a serious but uncommon outcome, such as TTS, is widely publicized ‘availability’, it will be given more weight. Some people anticipate negative emotions as a result of a decision and avoid ‘anticipated regret’, which may limit vaccine acceptance and influence a health care worker’s willingness to recommend one of the COVID-19 vaccines. People prefer to accept the result of doing nothing (not getting vaccinated) over the result of doing something (vaccinating) (‘omission bias’), and they avoid taking risks when the outcome is uncertain (‘ambiguity aversion’). 29
Public risk communication
General recommendation for effective communication with the patients and the public about COVID-19 vaccine safety would include communication of the procedure and the outcomes on a regular basis with clear values: using statements that are clear, truthful, and actionable; encouraging immunization, but are not overboarded with the assurances; increasing the number of communication channels and platforms, recognizing, and correcting any miss information; prioritizing communication with key groups, making use of reliable spokespersons; maintaining trustworthiness, using data to guide decisions; and monitoring the situations and evaluating them. 29
Conveying the message to a low level of literacy necessitates a message form that can positively affect the cognitive and emotions of the receiver. Speech messages should show empathy and respect for the general population and should be given by a recognized expert who is trusted by the population. 30
Keeping in mind the audience, the messages, and the environment, communication is crucial throughout the COVID-19 vaccine introduction. Vaccine confidence, safety, and risk communication can be compromised because of a lack of timely information. Health professionals and other stakeholders should be trained in practical areas such as answering public questions, establishing trust, creating communications messages, and dealing with mainstream media and social media. To avoid making the same mistakes, it is critical to learn from previous experiences with safety messages that went well or wrong. 31
Patients’ concerns about the safety and efficacy of vaccines can be reduced as a result of their high trust in physicians. Effective physician–patient communication places patients at the center of care and enhances healthy trusting relationships. Partnership and encouragement, shared agenda-setting, active listening, efforts to ensure patient understanding, and non-verbal actions demonstrate empathy.
Along with warmth, these are some of the tactics that can be used to create trust and facilitate patient involvement in the relationship. 32
Help people to weigh risk and benefit
Risk comparisons, such as comparing TTS risk to clots from the oral contraceptive pill, smoking, or a deep vein thrombosis from long-haul flights, have become common in order to provide information on probability. Risks and outcomes should be used in comparison to help individuals understand size rather than to communicate risk acceptance. The risks and their outcomes should be similar.
The use of numerical risk data formats allows for a more accurate understanding of risk. For people with poor numeracy knowledge, consider the addition of text formats. Visual elements, such as iconic matrices, can also help people in understanding the risks and benefits, especially for people with limited health literacy or English proficiency. Where risks are compared, the same denominator and the same time should be used. 29
The WHO established the Vaccine Safety Net (VSN), which is a global network of websites that provides accurate information on vaccine safety. The Vaccination Safety Network was created to counteract websites that provided imbalanced, inaccurate, and unreliable vaccine safety information. Its goal is to make credible, clear, evidence-based vaccine safety information more accessible to web users from all over the world who speak different languages. 27
Role of PV in risk management and risk communication during pandemics
Since the 1960s, when modern PV emerged, tremendous progress has been achieved in the way it is applied and its scope has expanded dramatically, evolving from the study of adverse drug reactions to a sophisticated PV that encompasses a variety of aspects such as big data management for signal detection, to the in-depth analysis of risks and its management and communication, which could be the focus of this article, among others.
The pandemic that we are just leaving is the first in which there is at hand so much knowledge and the facility (or hazard) of having information almost in an instantaneous way, and it has been a challenge for the PV community. The role of PV during this global crisis could be viewed in two ways: as a resounding failure or as a construction success, depending on the eyes of the beholder. During the pandemic, PV faced a monumental challenge in which the following aspects can be highlighted:
Emerging drug treatments without prior scientific evidence using drugs known for other conditions, but with unknown consequences in the context of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Accelerated research to find efficient and effective therapeutic alternatives: generation of evidence from clinical practice and research with diverse experimental designs.
Uncertainty and chaos due to mortality and virulence, in addition to the poor policies available for emergency care at the global level.
As previously mentioned, massive distribution of information through social media, but with questionable origin.33–35
Distrust of the population toward entities and authorities in a large part of the world.
Fast development of several vaccines and drugs as a result of accelerated research, which brought a lot of efficacy/effectiveness and safety data in the short term and minimal information on the long term. 33
Emerging self-styled anti-vaccine (anti-drug, anti-everything) groups recruiting significant numbers of supporters around the world, including scientists.
At the same time, promotion of miracle drugs or substances for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, coupled with the phenomenon of self-prescription.
Decompensation of chronic diseases during prolonged periods of confinement due to the lack of monitoring in the ambulatory setting.
Faced with all of the above, many of the global health systems had to react immediately and, in most cases, to make plans on the spot without prior evidence, which led to a high rate of improvisation.35–37
The above are some of the situations that most stand out in the context of PV (and in general in health care); in this context, we could state that PV performance during these more than 2 years has left more doubts than answers and in the minds of many stakeholders a feeling of poor participation. Aside from the above, it is important to highlight that today, as never before, the general population is much more aware of PV than before the pandemic. It is common to hear from global, national, and local authorities in the news about PV and the importance of reporting (although reporting does not make PV, it is a good beginning for the general population); never before have communication and risk management taken so much advantage of the information provided by PV systems.38,39
The question now remains as to how effective the goal of data collection and analysis has been and, possibly, the answer is a resounding NO. One can question the significant underreporting in the reporting systems, the lack of personnel focused on PV, the inability to analyze data and identify signals; but it is certain that after this pandemic, PV will no longer be the same (the Pharmacovigilance Renaissance Era). One could go into an in-depth analysis of the implications of the pandemic on the development of a new PV, but surely this would be work for a new paper.
Lessons learned
In the history of humanity, many challenging events have taught valuable lessons that have led to significant advances in society; this pandemic (and also the infodemic) will be no exception. As has been stated, the infodemic also included sensational and distorted information about drugs to treat COVID that likely first influenced the opinion of leaders, and particularly those who are active on social media, before spreading to other people affecting choices made by individual patients and members of the public everywhere. 40 This particularly concerned information that was spread about some drugs approved for other indications such as chloroquine and HCQ. This information was often communicated to the public without strong evidence which influenced the behavior of many people and have led to inappropriate and hazardous use of these drugs. This storm of information had a detrimental impact, first on supply chain and availability and then on chloroquine and HCQ utilization patterns. 41 For example, healthy people started taking uncontrolled doses of these drugs, mistakenly believing they could prevent COVID-19, which resulted in poisoning cases. 41 Such impact has extended to cause harm to patients using chloroquine and HCQ, as the public started frantically purchasing these drugs without prescription to ensure the availability of an emergency stock at home, thus reducing the supply for patients receiving chloroquine or HCQ for rheumatic and other diseases.42,43
During the pandemic, social media and technological advances have provided direct access to a large amount of information regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccine. 44 Sharing information accessed from untrustworthy and unrated sources has resulted in the amplification of rumors and questionable information resulting in infodemics. 45 These various infodemics detrimentally affect vaccine acceptance among communities in different countries reducing uptake of COVID-19 vaccination. Such vaccine hesitancy presents a major threat to achieving community coverage. 46 Notably, during the period, the EMA and several European countries were investigating blood clot cases potentially related to AstraZeneca vaccinations. 47
During the pandemic, traditional channels for safety communication may not be sufficient, as they are rarely found by HCPs or the public searching for information regarding safety information. 46 This shift from traditional channels of communication to social media is growing and has resulted in a significant amount of information regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccine. Therefore, stakeholders such as the WHO, policymakers, regulatory authorities, and health institutions must focus on public health communication campaigns. They must be proactive and utilize all available digital tools especially social media channels that are easily accessible to provide reliable and updated information regarding the safety of medicinal products of COVID-19 vaccine.
Two years after the beginning of the pandemic, many lessons have been learned and scientific advances have been made. The use of information, risk management, and risk communication should be a permanent concern for governments, regulatory agencies, scientific societies, the mass media, and the general public. Nowadays, rapid access to information puts the community at risk because the speed of access to data and the low health literacy of the community make it very easy to filter false information or information of low scientific quality. This is why the different stakeholders must establish strategies that are friendly and empathetic to the community so that they can be popular sources of reference, for example, the massive use of popular social networks (at the same time that other more traditional media are used). Furthermore, the pandemic has shown how important it is for government institutions to take an intensive approach to regain and maintain the trust and confidence of their communities, centralizing risk management and risk communication through officially recognized and reliable sources.
Conclusion
One of the most important aspects of any health-related issue is communicating information about both risks and benefits. All activities undertaken to combat a pandemic may fail if communication is not effective. As a result, all stakeholders, particularly health systems, regulatory bodies, and pharmaceutical companies, should take health information communication very seriously and ensure that any health issue is addressed correctly and effectively.
This pandemic has highlighted the importance of PV and how it can be the backbone of risk communication and risk management, allowing Society to obtain information that needs to support evidence-based decision-making.
