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

公众可以通过采取简单的行为，如洗手，在感染暴发中发挥关键作用，以遏制感染的传播。这可以通过防止每个人同时生病来拯救生命，这将意味着医疗系统无法应对，疫苗也无法及时开发。有证据表明，尽管有公共卫生建议，但大多数人需要增加洗手等有助于预防感染的行为。我们开发了一个在线干预(‘细菌防御’)，在猪流感大流行和季节性流感年进行了测试。细菌防御增加了洗手，减少了感染和医疗保健使用。这个新项目将迅速与利益相关者和用户合作，调整和翻译Germ-Defense，使其适合于在英国和中国预防冠状病毒(和其他类似流感的感染)的感染。我们将在两国迅速广泛地推广它，并收集有关它的使用方式、它如何影响人们的态度和行为以及用户对它的看法的在线信息。我们将利用我们的发现立即更新和改进细菌防御，并提出建议并提供工具，使细菌防御和其他公共卫生建议适用于更多国家和未来的疫情。

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.