Demand creation for testing and Covid-19 surveillance indicators in the Covid-19 Testing, Isolation, Quarantine, and...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Epidemiology
• Health Services Research

Background:

• Effective demand creation strategies are crucial for increasing uptake of Covid-19 testing.
• Surveillance indicators are essential for monitoring public health interventions during pandemics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze demand creation strategies for Covid-19 testing.
• To describe surveillance indicators for testing, quarantine, contact tracing, and telemonitoring in primary healthcare settings.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study using data from the TQT Covid-19 study (July 2022-July 2023).
• Intervention in primary healthcare units in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador to develop demand creation strategies.
• Logistic regression to identify characteristics of the population reached by each strategy.
• Estimation of surveillance indicators for testing, telemonitoring, quarantine, and contact tracing.

Main Results:

• Primary healthcare units (37.0%) and active search (25.9%) were most effective in driving testing uptake.
• Covid-19 positivity rates varied significantly between Salvador (27.2%) and Rio de Janeiro (11.5%).
• Telemonitoring covered 14.1% of cases, primarily asymptomatic or mild, with no reported deaths.
• Contact tracing identified 25.1% of contacts, with 41.5% declining testing.

Conclusions:

• The intervention successfully expanded Covid-19 testing, with primary healthcare units and active search proving most effective.
• Telemonitoring and contact tracing presented implementation challenges in primary healthcare settings.
• Strengthening telemonitoring and contact tracing is vital for future pandemic response.
• Surveillance is critical for evaluating public health measures and informing data-driven epidemic management.