Rapid co-design, implementation and evaluation of a digital behaviour change intervention to improve hand hygiene and limit spread of the COVID-19 outbreak

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The public can play a crucial role in infection outbreaks by adopting simple behaviours such as handwashing to curb the spread of infection. This can save lives by preventing everyone becoming ill at once, which would mean the healthcare system could not cope and a vaccine could not be developed in time. Evidence shows that despite public health advice most people need to increase behaviours such as handwashing that can help prevent infection. We developed an online intervention (‘Germ-Defence’) that was tested in the swine flu pandemic and seasonal flu years. Germ-Defence increased handwashing and reduced infections and healthcare use. This new project will quickly work with stakeholders and users to adapt and translate Germ-Defence to be suitable for preventing infection from coronavirus (and other flu-like infections) in the UK and China. We will roll it out rapidly and widely in both countries, and collect online information about how it is used, how it affects people’s attitudes and behaviour, and users’ views of it. We will use our findings to immediately update and improve Germ-Defence and to make recommendations and provide tools for adapting Germ-Defence and other public health advice for use in more countries and in future outbreaks.