[Prevention measures to avoid COVID-19 spreading by: from the everyday to the technical-scientific actions.]

Romero-Saritama, José Miguel; Simaluiza, Janneth; Fernandez, Heriberto

BACKGROUND In the attempt to reactivate the economy after several months of the pandemic generated by COVID-19, several South American countries have been forced to attenuate the restriction measures created to prevent contagion, leaving all the responsibility to citizens to safeguard their lives. Faced with this situation, the objective of the work was to promote good prevention practices against COVID-19 in the general population to avoid the collapse of the public health system. METHODS An exploratory review on prevention measures against COVID-19 was carried out in the databases Elsevier, Pubmed, Wiley, Scopus, Scielo and, in general, in academic Google, to obtain gray information. RESULTS The role of seven individual protection and prevention measures and barriers to stop the advance of community infections by COVID-19 were described and analyzed. Studies showed that the use of preventive measures can play a critical role in containing the pandemic. However, they can also provide a false security of protection, predisposing to neglect the correct use and handling of all containment measures. CONCLUSIONS Given the drastic rise in infections and deaths from COVID-19 in Latin America, it becomes necessary to continue with biosecurity campaigns so that citizens are clear that prevention is an integrated process and that the use of one measure does not replace another.