Environmental health management in local community isolation facilities during COVID-19 pandemic: A case study in Nakhon Si Thammarat, Thailand.

Community isolation facilities (CIFs) were adopted as a containment strategy in many countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, but information on environmental health management in CIFs is unknown. This retrospective research aimed to study the preparedness and implementation of CIFs from an environmental health perspective. The study was conducted in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Thailand. A total number of 114 staff working during the establishment and operation of 57 CIFs were enrolled. Two questionnaires were collected from the founding and operating staff from 27 May to 5 October 2022. One questionnaire, designed based on the guidelines for establishing of CIFs developed by the Department of Health, was used to examine the preparedness of the founding staff. Another questionnaire was developed to investigate the implementation by the operating staff. The data was presented as the levels of preparedness and implementation of CIFs and analyzed by descriptive statistics. Local government organizations played a major role in the establishment and cooperation with local public health offices in the operation of CIFs. Two-thirds of the founding and operating staff had no experience in environmental health. However, most of the CIFs showed preparedness for the establishment of CIFs and conducted environmental health implementation at a good level in all dimensions, except for infrastructure for wastewater treatment, disinfection, and system monitoring. The decentralized governance model in Thailand facilitated the operation of small CIFs to prevent COVID-19 transmission in local communities. However, qualified personnel and appropriate infrastructure were obstacles to full environmental health implementation. The guidelines by the Department of Health suggested as fundamental for environmental health management of CIFs in this study should be appropriately adopted based on the different contexts of each country to ensure preparedness for future infectious disease outbreaks.