COVID-19/Risk Mitigation Strategies

SDG3: Good Health and Well-being - Learning Resouce supports the SDG-Tagging -

Testing and Quarantine

• Testing provides information if parts of the genetic code of virus or antibodies can be detected for a person.
• Patients can be infected e.g. in a crowded place or in an aeroplane on their way back from holidays. The test at the airport might be negative while the patient is COVID-19 positive. After waiting in quarantine for the incubation time a second test would check if there was infection e.g. on their way back from the holiday.

Small Communities

Most vulnerable are members of communities

• that are old and/or
• have already respiratory disease (like asthma)
• that have immunosuppression e.g. due to transplantation of heart or kidney
• have a disease that has an impact on the activation of the immune system and the immunological response (like HIV t-helper cells).
• ...

If you have members of your community (e.g. family, members of living together in an accomodation) then theses risk exposed members of your small community need to be epidemiologically disconnected from the rest of community. Risk mitigation strategies could include:

• support them in getting food, required goods and medication that are required, so that they did not expose themselves to social contacts during the epidemiological outbreak of the disease.
• people living together in the same accomodation should keep distance if possible and apply high hygiene standards. Furthermore they should apply the high risk mitigation standards to the members of the small community especially when they show symptoms of COVID-19 (quarantine). Behave as COVID-19 positive unless you are tested to be negative to prevent the risk exposed members of your community from being infected.

Learning Tasks

• (Identify the most vulnerable) perform a risk analysis for your community! Who is the member that must be protected the most? How can we in a community support the most vulnerable members?
• (Required and Avoidable Contacts) Which social contacts can be avoided with low efforts? Which are social interaction that are required currently (e.g. medical or personal support for grand parents) and can these support be performed with best possible safety standards?
• (Neighbourhood Support) Are there any people living in your neighbourhood that live alone and need your help? Exchanging phone numbers to create and organize support for your neighbourhood!
• (Consequences for Small Community) Analyse the recommendations of public health agencies and WHO and try to adapt them to the requirements and constraints of your community! Expect dynamic changes in the epidemiological risk assessment and keep updated and do not panic! Exaggerated behaviour of the population could have a negative impact on the supply chain of the population and the even the availability of health service delivery and safety of the required health services to fight against the COVID-19 disease. This is an important part of Risk Literacy.
• (Contact Time and Number of Contacts as Precious Good) Regard contact time and number of different contacts as precious good. If your old parents have Alzheimer's Disease they are dependent on your visit and the visits might be regarded as extremely valuable for you to provide some time in which they are happy. The vulnerability of your parents might lead to less contacts to other members of community you normally interact. This is just an example of different assessments of number of different contacts and contact time. Perform such kind of assessment for yourself and identify the workflows to protect your most vulnerable by keeping your total number of different contacts small and apply the protective measures for you and others according to the known risk mitigation strategies.

See also

• Workflow Transformation for COVID-19
• Risk Literacy