Non-pharmaceutical behavioural measures for droplet-borne biological hazards prevention: Health-EDRM for COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic

Introduction: Non-pharmaceutical interventions to facilitate response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a disease caused by novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, are urgently needed. Using the WHO health emergency and disaster risk management (health-EDRM) framework, behavioural measures for droplet-borne communicable disease, with their enabling and limiting factors at various implementation levels were evaluated. Sources of data: Keyword search was conducted in PubMed, Google Scholar, Embase, Medline, Science Direct, WHO and CDC online publication database. Using OCEBM as review criteria, 105 English-language articles, with ten bottom-up, non-pharmaceutical prevention measures, published between January 2000 and May 2020 were identified and examined. Areas of Agreement: Evidence-guided behavioural measures against COVID-19 transmission for global at-risk communities are identified. Area of Concern: Strong evidence-based systematic behavioural studies for COVID-19 prevention are lacking. Growing points: Very limited research publications are available for non-pharmaceutical interventions to facilitate pandemic response. Areas timely for research: Research with strong implementation feasibility that targets resource-poor settings with low baseline Health-EDRM capacity is urgently need.