The response from the Erasmus MC, Netherlands, was similar to that of North Tees and the Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust in that there was early reconfiguration of strategic and tactical measures and decision-making structures. A Crisis Management Team was deployed from the beginning of wave one of the pandemic, supplanted later by a COVID Coordination Team and a series of working groups that were given the tasks of organising clinical capacity, human resources, logistics, equipment and facilities.

Over time, the links between managers and clinical staff became more direct:

1. An expert panel was convened to answer questions from employees via livestream sessions
2. The hospital’s intranet was used as the unifying source of information on infection control protocols and how to correctly put on and remove PPE
3. And the hospital-wide Quality Management System hosted information and updates that could be directly accessed from the communication devices used by nurses.