Act fast, stop COVID: The successful implementation of the first decentralised Victorian COVID-19 contact tracing and monitoring unit.

Objectives: To describe the operational model, epidemiology and outcomes of COVID-19 cases managed by the first decentralised Victorian Public Health Unit (PHU) in the Barwon South-West (BSW) region in 2020.
Methods: The Barwon Health team used a clinician-led, locally-based interprofessional model of care, combining clinical care and monitoring, contact tracing and public health measures.
Results: From 7th March to 5th October 2020, 575 confirmed COVID-19 cases (82 in Wave 1; 493 in Wave 2) were identified in residents of the BSW region. Overall, 4.7% were admitted to local hospitals (0.7% to intensive care units) and 1.7% died. COVID-19 incidence in the region was 129 cases/100,000. Wave 2 in the region featured community transmission in high-risk settings and among culturally and linguistically diverse and mobile populations. Within 3 months of the initial local case in Wave 2, SARS-COV-2 was eliminated from the community.
Conclusions: A local interprofessional model of care was key to the containment of community transmission and complex outbreaks with the elimination of COVID-19 in the community.
Implications for Public Health: Key successes and learnings from the BSW PHU contributed to the improvement of statewide systems and responses and provided an impetus for the implementation of a decentralised public health model for Victoria.
Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)