Community COVID Team – Experience from Bac Giang

To promote the effectiveness of the Community COVID Team model, the Central Committee for Mass Mobilization has just published an article introducing the operational experience of the Community COVID Team in Bac Giang to replicate and promote the effectiveness of this model in mobilizing people to participate in the work of preventing and fighting the COVID-19 epidemic.

Nghe An Newspaper respectfully introduces the article:

1. Direction and implementation

The fourth wave of COVID-19 entering Bac Giang province is the wave with the largest number of infections, unprecedented. From May 7 to July 11, 2021, the total number of F0 cases in the province was 5,766 cases. In that situation, the Bac Giang Provincial Party Committee has determined that "Communes and wards must be fortresses, each citizen is a soldier in epidemic prevention and control, and the Community COVID Team is a strategic weapon, an important nucleus to mobilize the strength of the entire people, decide victory and firmly protect the achievements of COVID-19 prevention and control", especially in the condition that vaccination has not yet achieved community immunity.

The community Covid-19 team in Vinh city is primarily responsible for providing food to people in areas where enhanced Directive 16 is applied. Photo: Quang An

The community COVID team is established by the People's Committee of the commune level, with a number of 3-5 people, including cadres, villages, hamlets, residential groups, and organizations, especially with the participation of a number of healthy, enthusiastic, and dedicated people in the residential area. The team is run by 01 team leader. Each team is in charge of 30-50 households and has a specific list of assigned households.

Community COVID Team members are trained and given detailed instructions on their duties, regulations, procedures, and how to carry out their duties safely in accordance with regulations on epidemic prevention and control. The tasks of the Community COVID Team are edited by Bac Giang province with simple, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-implement content. To ensure that information is communicated smoothly, promptly, and consistently, the province has directed the establishment of Zalo groups from the province to residential areas.

2. Activities of the Community COVID Team

Every day, team members will go to every alley, knock on every door, and check each subject to perform the following 5 tasks:

- Propaganda, mobilize, and remind people to implement epidemic prevention and control measures according to the 5K message. Request and guide people to self-monitor their health, measure body temperature daily for family members. Provide phone numbers and request people to proactively make medical declarations as soon as they or their family members show signs of suspected COVID-19 infection; propagate and mobilize families and workers to sign a commitment to implement epidemic prevention and control regulations.

- Ask, monitor, detect and immediately report by phone, Zalo to local authorities and commune health stations suspected cases of COVID-19 detected in households such as: fever, cough, sore throat, flu, fatigue, respiratory tract infection,... to organize isolation and take samples for timely testing.

- Coordinate, detect and report to competent authorities cases of non-voluntary medical declaration; non-compliance with epidemic prevention and control measures as prescribed; returning from epidemic areas; illegal entry.

- Assist the government and health agencies in tracing F1 and F2 cases when there are cases in the area under their management; coordinate and support testing to ensure epidemic prevention and accurate sampling of subjects.

- Grasp the ideological situation and life of the people and workers in the locality; mobilize and support people's lives; guide households and supervise the harvesting of agricultural products to ensure epidemic prevention safety. Perform other tasks appropriate to the capacity assigned by the Commune Steering Committee.

The results of the above tasks are recorded daily in a diary (the diary is distributed according to a unified form throughout the province) and sent via Zalo to the commune, the commune reports to the district, and the district reports to the province.

In addition, the 4th outbreak occurred during the lychee, rice and agricultural harvest season; the Community COVID Team has made an important contribution, being the core force in achieving the dual goal of both fighting the epidemic and producing. The team proactively organized the harvesting and selling of products to help families without workers or being quarantined at home or in centralized quarantine; arranged schedules for families to organize the harvesting of agricultural products to ensure epidemic prevention safety; distributed supported goods and food to households to ensure fairness...

In practice, in the early stages of the fourth wave of the pandemic, Bac Giang was the province with the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country with a rapid rate of infection in a short period of time. In response to this situation, the province established 10,963 community COVID Teams, COVID Teams for workers' dormitories and COVID Teams for apartment buildings with nearly 40,000 members. The community COVID Teams have clearly demonstrated their very important role and position in:

(1) Propagating and mobilizing people to strictly implement the regulations on disease prevention and control of the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 Prevention and Control, helping people understand and strictly implement the regulations on social distancing as a responsibility for their own health, their family's health and society, so each person must voluntarily implement it.

(2) Grasp the situation of the people, the epidemic situation, the lives of the people and workers, difficulties that need help in social security, and agricultural product harvesting to promptly report to local Party committees and authorities or proactively discuss solutions right at the residential area.

It can be affirmed that this is a model that is directly close to the people; a direct bridge between the leadership and direction of the Party and State with the people; a model that deeply demonstrates the policy of "People know, people discuss, people do, people check, people supervise, people benefit" and is proof that the victory over the epidemic is the victory of the people.