ReliefWeb

(Excerpt)

Priority needs for COVID-19

With significant increase in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the West Bank during the last two weeks of June 2020 and the expected return of substantial number of Palestinians to the Gaza Strip, the health sector’s response for the management of COVID-19 outbreak in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) focused on the rapid containment of the outbreak through:

• scaling up of testing capacities across the oPt;

• effective surveillance, contact tracing, timely isolation of confirmed cases and quarantine of suspected cases;

• infection prevention and control, focusing on protection of frontline health workers, staff at treatment, isolation and quarantine centres, staff at primary healthcare facilities and ambulance services;

• effective case management as per latest internationally adopted protocols and WHO recommendations, including provision of mental health and psychosocial support services for COVID-19 patients and their families and communities at large;

• large scale risk communication and community engagement to achieve social behaviour change and promote physical distancing, hand and respiratory hygiene and prevention of stigma and misinformation;

• ensuring essential health services affected by re-direction of scarce health system resources to COVID-19 response were sustained.