Implications for nursing and health policy
What we have learned from the COVID‐19 pandemic is that we need to well prepare for any unpredicted emerging pandemic in the future. Nurses are at the frontline who comprise more than half of health workforce and are the critical manpower to prevent the collapse of healthcare system due to any pandemic crisis. Unfortunately, according to 2020 State of the World’s Nursing (World Health Organization 2020b), the number of nurses per 10,000 populations varies from 0.6 to 196. Investing in nursing is the imperative priority to increase nursing workforce. As of the early June 2020, more than 600 nurses died from the COVID‐19 pandemic due to insufficient PPE (International Council of Nurses2020). Providing adequate PPE and appropriate staffing should be the highest priority and responsibility of the governments and policymakers around the world to protect nurses’ safety and save people’s lives.