Abstract
National strategies to control COVID-19 pandemic consisted mostly of social distancing measures such as lockdowns, curfews, and stay-home guidelines, personal protection such as hand hygiene and mask wearing, as well as contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. Whilst policy interventions were broadly similar across the globe, there were some differences in individual and community responses. This study explored community responses to COVID-19 containment measures in different countries and synthesized a model. This exaplains the community response to pandemic containment measures in the local context, so as to be suitably prepared for future interventions and research. A mutlinational study was conducted from April-June 2020 involving researchers from 12 countries (Japan, Austria, U.S., Taiwan, India, Sudan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand). Steps in this research consisted of carrying out open-ended questionnaires, qualitative analyses in NVivo, and a multinational meeting to reflect, exchange, and validate results. Lastly, a commuinty response model was synthesized from multinational experiences. Effective communication is key in promoting collective action for preventing virus transmission. Health literacy, habits and social norms in different populations are core components of public health interventions. To enable people to stay home while sustaining livelihoods, economic and social support are essential. Countries could benefit from previous pandemic experience in their community response. Whilst contact tracing and isolation are crucial intervention components, issues of privacy and human rights need to be considered. Understanding community responses to containment policies will help in ending current and future pandemics in the world.
Highlights
National strategies to control COVID-19 pandemic consisted mostly of social distancing measures such as lockdowns, curfews, and stay-home guidelines, personal protection such as hand hygiene and mask wearing, as well as contact tracing, isolation and quarantine
As we go through these waves of the pandemic, reflecting on first hand experiences and consolidating evidence of community behaviors and responses to public health measures across the globe is helpful for designing and adapting cuturally-senstive interventions that aim to contain the spread of future epidemics and pandemics
Empowering people to practice preventive behaviours is as essential as enforecement. Behavioural confrmaity whilst they can continue their healthy social life is the basic for sustainable community response to the pandemic. (Figure 1) The eight themes we identified in this study may help guide each community to build up an empowerment strategy to respond to ongoing pandemic (Table 1)
Summary
National strategies to control COVID-19 pandemic consisted mostly of social distancing measures such as lockdowns, curfews, and stay-home guidelines, personal protection such as hand hygiene and mask wearing, as well as contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. Countries reacted differently by putting in place largescale public preventive and containment measures such as lockdowns, curfews, stay-at-home guidelines, health messaging for individual measures, and isolation hopsitals or quarantine centers [3]. Public health determinants such as health literacy, law enforcement, and collective action, played a key role in the enforcement of public health policies and in containment of the virus. As we go through these waves of the pandemic, reflecting on first hand experiences and consolidating evidence of community behaviors and responses to public health measures across the globe is helpful for designing and adapting cuturally-senstive interventions that aim to contain the spread of future epidemics and pandemics. It is hoped that this exploratory and reflective summary of the evidence will contribute to further research and serve as a guide for countries’ public policies which seek successful community engagement and participation
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