Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) technical guidance by WHO Responding to community spread of COVID-19 | Page 4

Responding to community spread of COVID-19: Interim guidance
Surveillance and risk and severity assessments
Advice on the use of masks
Intended for public health and IPC professionals, health care
managers, health workers and community health on use of
medical masks for COVD-19 in communities, at home and at
health facilities.
Available in English and Russian.
Summary
In the event of community transmission over large areas of
the country, surveillance may need to evolve from the daily
reporting of individual cases towards the less frequent
(e.g., weekly) reporting of aggregated data for the purpose of
monitoring disease trends. WHO will provide guidance on the
reporting of aggregated data. WHO recommends a
surveillance approach based on, or similar to the Global
Influenza Surveillance and Response System (GISRS) that
facilitates less resource-intensive monitoring. Routine
surveillance will complement special studies on risk factors,
severity, clinical treatments, transmission dynamics in health
workers or close settings and other studies on COVID-19.
Standard precautions in health care
Aide-memoire providing checklist for infection control.
Available in English and Russian.
Q&A on infection prevention and control for health workers
caring for patients.
IPC for health workers caring for patients with suspected or
confirmed COVID-19.
Available in English and Russian.
Regular risk assessments at regional, national and subnational
levels (including for specific settings such as e.g. small
islands) should continue to guide the locally most appropriate
prevention and control measures.
IPC assessment framework
WHO Guidelines on Core Components of IPC programmes
at the acute health facility level.
Available in English.
Assessing the clinical severity of COVID-19 is required to
understand excess morbidity and mortality, evaluate the
impact on the health systems and plan for future needs.
Countries can build on their experience with assessing disease
severity of COVID-19 through influenza or other disease
protocols.
Hand hygiene self-assessment framework and compliance
observation tools.
Tool to help obtain a situation analysis of hand hygiene
promotion and practices in a health facility.
Available in English, French, and Spanish.
Recommended actions
Highest priority:
 Disseminate national case definitions for
surveillance to the public and private health sectors
and communicate changes when needed.
 Implement surveillance strategies to monitor and
report disease trends, disease severity and impacts
on health and other systems.
WASH facilities improvement tool (WASH FIT)
Risk-based, continuous improvement framework with tools
for health facilities.
Available in English, Arabic, French, Russian, and Spanish.
Rational use of personal protective equipment for coronavirus
disease (COVID-19).
WHO recommendations for the rational use of PPE in health
care and community settings, including the handling of cargo.
Available in English.
Secondary priority:
 Continue conducting risk assessments as
appropriate. Use global, regional and/or national
and local risk assessments to guide actions or
changes to the response strategy.
 Establish mechanisms to use surveillance analysis
and risk assessments to review national
preparedness and response plans.
Coming soon: Health workers exposure risk assessment and
management in the context of COVID-19 virus.
Training: OpenWHO Infection prevention and control
(IPC) for novel coronavirus (COVID-19).
1. IPC programmes
2. Chain of transmission
3. Hand and respiratory hygiene
4. Injection safety
5. Decontamination
6. Environmental cleaning
7. Waste management
8. Transmission based precautions
Available in English.
Resources
Coming soon: Global surveillance for monitoring community
transmission of COVID-19.
Training: OpenWHO Emerging respiratory viruses, including
COVID-19.
Module A: Introduction to emerging respiratory viruses,
including COVID-19.
Module B: Detecting emerging respiratory viruses, including
COVID-19: Surveillance and laboratory.
Training: OpenWHO ePROTECT respiratory infections
1. Acute Respiratory Infections (ARIs) of public
health concern- Introduction Chain of transmission.
2. How to protect yourself against ARIs
3. Basic hygiene measures
4. Wearing a medical mask
Available in English and French.
Available in English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese,
Russian, and Spanish.
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