
doi: 10.61473/001c.75329
On 30 March 2020, the South African President proclaimed the need for intensive community screening and testing, utilising community health workers to curb the spread of COVID-19 and to scale up and expand local, district and provincial case investigation. The objectives of community screening and testing were to: facilitate early identification of probable COVID-19 cases and early referral for testing; identify people sick at home and facilitate their referral to Primary Health Care facilities or hospitals; and provide health education on COVID-19 so as to increase awareness and promote behaviour change and prevention. CST included a series of approaches, namely door-to-door-screening, a cluster approach, and a targeted-area approach. The targeted-area approach was the last to be introduced, with screening and testing teams deployed to identified COVID-19 hotspot areas and individuals with medical needs prioritised for clinical diagnosis, including contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases. Implementation of the targeted screening approach was effective in identifying a higher yield of positive COVID-19 cases, and in strengthening the integration of CHWs into facilities for service delivery at community level. The Community Screening and Testing programme has provided evidence that Community Health Workers play a crucial role in undertaking community-based activities to address behaviour change, case-identification, and referrals for testing and linkage to health facilities. This chapter provides a descriptive analysis of South Africa’s community screening and testing strategy, and outlines the impact of its implementation on case-finding at community level. A comparison of active and passive case-finding was used to illustrate the outcomes of using community health workers to conduct screening in the community.
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 2 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Average | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Average |
