This document is updated.
Please check the document:Priority medical devices list for the COVID-19 response and associated technical specifications
WHO recommends member states provide universal access to public hand hygiene stations and making their use obligatory on entering and leaving any public or private commercial building and any public transport facility. It is also recommended that healthcare facilities improve access to and practice ...of hand hygiene.
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Hand Hygiene is one of the most effective actions to reduce the spread of pathogens and prevent infections, including the COVID-19 virus. This document promotes the WHO global hand hygiene campaign SAVE LIVES: Clean Your Hands in the context of other hand hygiene initiatives launched by WHO for COVI...D-19, and provides rapid technical guidance.
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The wearing of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is standard practice for the handling of the deceased and should be carried out in line with standard Health and Safety procedures.
Healthcare and deathcare workers should take precautions when handling the remains of individuals who have died fr...om COVID-19.
This set of four posters provides healthcare and deathcare workers with guidance in the handling of the dead.
The posters cover the following topics:
- How to put on PPE correctly
- During body handling and preparation process
- Removing PPE correctly
- Management of COVID-19 Related Deaths: Key considerations and recommendations for managers
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This document is intended to guide the care of COVID-19 patients as the response capacity of health systems is challenged; to ensure that COVID-19 patients can access life-saving treatment, without compromising public health objectives and safety of health workers.
It promotes two key messages:
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1. Key public health interventions regardless of transmission scenario; and
2. Key action steps to be taken by transmission scenario to enable timely surge of clinical operations.
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This is a guide for healthcare workers involved in patient care activities in a healthcare setting. It aims to show the type of personal protective equipment or PPE needed to correctly protect oneself. Based on the current available evidence, the WHO recommended PPE for the care of COVID patients ar...e CONTACT and DROPLET precautions, with the exception of aerosol producing procedures, which require CONTACT and AIRBORNE (hence, a respirator mask such as N95, FFP2, FFP3). Keeping in mind, PPE is part of a larger infection prevention and control bundle of measures and should be implemented as part of a multimodal strategy of management of COVID-19 patients. Only clinical staff who are trained and competent in the use of PPE should be allowed to enter the patient’s room.
This course is also available in the following languages:
العربية -македонски - 中文 - Shqip - français - ภาษาไทย - Português - Español - Nederlands - Tetun
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Contact tracing may help limit COVID-19 transmission when the first cases are identified within a country but can be very resource intensive.
It is likely not to be feasible when community transmission is occurring and cases outside known transmission chains increase greatly.
Health workers are at the front line of the COVID-19 outbreak response and as such are exposed to hazards that put them at risk of infection. Hazards include pathogen exposure, long working hours, psychological distress, fatigue, occupational burnout, stigma, and physical and psychological violence.... This document highlights the rights and responsibilities of health workers, including the specific measures needed to protect occupational safety and health.
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Most health care-associated infections are preventable through good hand hygiene – cleaning hands at the right times and in the right way. The WHO Guidelines on hand hygiene in health care support hand hygiene promotion and improvement in health care facilities worldwide and are complemented by th...e WHO multimodal hand hygiene improvement strategy, the guide to implementation, and implementation toolkit, which contain many ready-to-use practical tools. This module has been prepared to help summarize the WHO guidelines on hand hygiene, associated tools and ideas for effective implementation.
Available in different languages!
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Under the International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005, public health authorities at international ports, airports and ground crossings are required to establish effective contingency plans and arrangements for responding to events that may constitute a public health emergency of international concer...n and to communicate with their National IHR Focal Point about relevant public health measures.
The current outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) disease has spread across borders through travelers, conveyances, which has prompted demands for the detection and management of suspected cases at points of entry (POE), including ports, airports and ground crossings, on board conveyances.
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This training is part of the national Rapid Response Team Training package, adapted to take into account specific issues pertaining to the COVID-19 outbreak. Several technical aspects presented here were developed and posted on different WHO platforms and for larger / different audiences. In this pa...ckage, we have regrouped the essential elements that you, as a member of the national RRT, may wish to take into account as you perform COVD-19 related activities
The objectives of this online learning package is to provide National Rapid Response Teams members with the key knowledge and tools needed to early detect and effectively respond to a Covid-19 outbreak.
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24 April 2020
Policy considerations
for the WHO European Region
This document provides key considerations for Member States to help them to decide on the modulation
of large-scale restrictive public health measures
(i.e. movement restrictions and large-scale physical distancing), while at the... same time strengthening core public health service capacities (to identify, isolate,
test and treat every patient and quarantine contacts) together with personal protective measures (hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette) and individual physical distancing (>1 metre distance). The transition should be informed by national, subnational or even community-level risk assessments as the transmission of COVID-19 is typically not homogeneous within a country.
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Policy considerations for the WHO European Region
24 April 2020