Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic in Germany has demanded a substantially larger public health workforce to perform contact tracing and contact management of COVID-19 cases, in line with recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO). In response, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) established the national “Containment Scout Initiative” (CSI) to support the local health authorities with a short-term workforce solution. It is part of a range of measures for strengthening the public health system in order to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Germany. The CSI is an example of how solutions to address critical health system capacity issues can be implemented quickly. It also demonstrates that medical or health-related backgrounds may not be necessary to support health authorities with pandemic-specific tasks and fulfil accurate contact tracing. However, it is a short-term solution and cannot compensate for the lack of existing qualified staff as well as other deficits that exist within the public health sector in Germany. This article describes the structure and process of the first phase of this initiative in order to support health policymakers, public health practitioners, and researchers considering innovative and flexible approaches for addressing urgent workforce capacity issues.
Highlights
The public health workforce is one of the essential components of a functional health system and is directly linked to its quality [1]
The purpose of this paper is to describe the concept and processes of this evolving initiative as well as the results from surveys conducted during the first phase (March 2020 to October 2020) in the context of the workforce capacity challenges experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic
The first Containment Scouts (CSs) started their employment in April 2020, and more than 500 CSs had been recruited in total after ten weeks
Summary
The public health workforce is one of the essential components of a functional health system and is directly linked to its quality [1]. Underfunding of health systems has become an increasing issue in many European countries [2], which has resulted in a shortage of staff in the public health sector [3]. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems worldwide have been placed under even further pressure. The public health workforce in Germany has been impacted by the pandemic, with limited capacities and resources already prior to the pandemic [4]. The usual health workforce capacity has been depleted at times due to sickness absence as a result of COVID-19. The German government responded to the pandemic by delivering its pandemic strategy [5] and comprehensively introducing measures at every level of the health system (Figure 1)
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