Under the COVID-19 Preparedness and Response Plan (PRP) for NWS 34 COVID-19 Community Treatment Centers (CCTC)s were established as a solution for COVID-19 patients and contacts who cannot manage home-isolation. While these centers were prepared with a capacity of 1,700 beds, people didn’t utilize the services of these centers at an optimal rate. As the centers employ over 1,713 medical and non-medical staff members, it was important to understand this under-utilization and derive a set of recommendations for these centers to be better utilized. Deploying 49 surveyors from its community health worker network, UDER interviewed a sample of 991 participants representing all of northwest Syria (NWS) to assess their knowledge and perceptions of the participants in relation to COVID-19 and CCTCs.
The results of this survey were presented to the NWS COVID-19 taskforce, and the recommendations were discussed with NGOs managing CCTCs to ensure that they were practical and feasible, and this included:

1. As the two most common reasons for not moving to a CCTC by COVID-19 patients were being able to manage their cases at home and the mild symptoms that didn’t make it necessary for them to visit a CCTC, there is a need to correct this misinformation by explaining that CCTCs are needed not only to manage mild or moderate COVID-19 cases, but to also isolate self from others to avoid spreading the infection in the community. Staying at home if infected is only an option if patients can fully isolate themselves.

2. As the third most common reason for not moving to a CCTC by COVID-19 patients was having to stay home and take care of children, it is recommended to advocate to provide conditional cash assistance and/or food baskets for families of patients in CCTCs to compensate for their time spent in CCTCs and ensure that their families’ basic needs are addressed.
COVID-19 patients who visited the CCTCs reported staying less days on average than the standard 14-day period, which might be an indicator that some patients discontinued their stay. It is recommended to raise the awareness of the visitors and provide them with adequate instructions and information about the importance of their stay until the appropriate time of discharge.

3. Since most COVID-19 patients did not visit CCTCs, it is necessary to re-share the set of instructions to follow during self-isolations with all patients. Follow-up on patients who chose home-isolation is a must to ensure that they follow the isolation instructions. This can be done by community health workers (CHW)s.

4. Although the services at CCTCs were positively rated in general, and that only a small percentage of participants heard bad things about the centers, it is recommended to improve the services to the maximum extent possible and to introduce recreational activities to encourage patients to move to CCTCs for the full isolation period, while ensuring a commitment to infection-control and medical instructions.

The full report can be downloaded through the following link: