Protecting our health care workers while protecting our communities during the COVID-19 pandemic: a comparison of approaches and early outcomes in two Italian regions, Italy, 2020

Nancy Binkin; Stefania Salmaso; Federica Michieletto; Francesca Russo

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04. 10.20060707 doi: medRxiv preprint Health authorities in Veneto identified hospitals and convalescent centers that would care for COVID-19 cases, doubled the region's ICU capacity and obtained an adequate number of ventilators. They gradually moved non-COVID-19 patients out of the designated COVID-19 hospitals, generally to smaller community hospitals set aside for non-COVID-19 patients. In addition to strengthening the ability to care for patients, however, enhanced public health measures were also developed and implemented. Though a series of meetings and written communications with leaders of local health units and hospitals, regional leadership implemented an articulated community-based strategy. Key elements are presented in the Box, but they included extensive contact tracing, rapid testing of both cases and an extended network of contacts, supervised quarantine and isolation, minimization of contact between HCW and the public, and informatics systems for rapid communication on case diagnosis and management and for monitoring bed availability. All non-essential public health activities were promptly put on hold, and a force of more than 750 public health workers throughout the region was mobilized.