IPNews-Monrovia: The Ministry of Health and the National Public Health Institute of Liberia, in collaboration with its international partners, calls on the public to observe the shutdowns and stay-at-home, measurers put in place by the government of Liberia to accelerate active case search at the community level.
It may be recalled,President George Weah, stated that the measure is in the preservation the joint security of all at the community level during the response against COVID-19 pandemic.
“We also wish to informed the public that during this period, there will be active case search from door-to-door to find those likely infected and alert the case investigators through the special medical dispatcher.”
“The case investigator will determine the risk level and trigger the next series of actions which includes the movement of suspected cases by ambulance to the nearest quarantine center for patients with high risk contacts to a Precautionary Observation Center (POC) by dedicated buses that are disinfected after every trip.”
“This exercise will be a joint initiative of active case search teams, Community health volunteers, community task force, contact tracers and case investigators. They will be supported by the Community Chairmen and the joint security.” A statement from the NPHIL read.
On the issue of finding sinchhe active case search is expected to implore the ratio of house to house search using 1 team of 3 persons to 5 houses per day.
As part of this engagement process, a total of 300,000 (1,500,00/5) member per household are targeted to be reach.
The Incident Management System(IMS) has targeted 10 days to accomplish an intensive search by each team searching 5 houses a day within 10 days reaching 50 houses per team.
Two local community member, along with a member of the joint security and a psychosocial specialist will also be a part of each team.
Additionally, sample collection teams comprising two Stationary laboratory teams at the 14 military hospital will collect samples of suspected cases while two stationary teams at Marshall Hope for Women will collect specimens from suspected cases, using two mobile laboratory teams to collect specimens at the quarantine centers. We have put in place a stationary team at SKD with two mobile teams to rapidly set-up drive through testing base on the available epidemiological data.
