Water Sanitation and Health
Our vision and mission are the attainment by all peoples of the lowest possible burden of water and sanitation-related disease through primary prevention.
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WASH and COVID-19

The provision of safe water, sanitation and hygienic conditions is essential to protecting human health during all infectious disease outbreaks, including the COVID-19 outbreak. Ensuring good and consistently applied WASH and waste management practices in communities, homes, schools, marketplaces, prisons and health care facilities will further help to prevent human-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 virus.

Environmental surveillance for SARS-COV-2 to complement other public health surveillance

This guidance supersedes the first April 2022 version. It is targeted at public health officials who want to understand and integrate complementary environmental surveillance (ES) into COVID-19 control strategies.

Routine diagnostic surveillance for COVID-19 has been augmented with ES in wastewater in many locations. ES provides additional evidence on virus in circulation at population level including presence or absence, early warning of increasing or decreasing trends, and information on variants of concern or interest.  This guidance provides advice on:

  • What situations ES has been shown to add value to public health decision making
  • On what basis should an ES programme be initiated, maintained, modified, paused, or stopped
  • What is needed to plan and coordinate an effective ES programme
  • How to carry out data collection, analysis, interpretation and communication of results
Environmental surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 to complement other public health surveillance
12 September 2023

Environmental surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 to complement other public health surveillance
This guidance supersedes the first April 2022 version. It is targeted at public health officials who want to understand and integrate complementary environmental...
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Water, sanitation, hygiene and waste management for COVID-19 technical guidance

This Technical Brief supplements existing IPC documents by referring to and summarizing WHO guidance on water, sanitation and health care waste which is relevant for viruses (including coronaviruses). This Technical Brief is written in particular for water and sanitation practitioners and providers.

Interim recommendations on obligatory hand hygiene against transmission of COVID-19

Current evidence indicates that the COVID-19 virus is transmitted through respiratory droplets or contact. Contact transmission occurs when contaminated hands touch the mucosa of the mouth, nose, or eyes; the virus can also be transferred from one surface to another by contaminated hands, which facilitates indirect contact transmission. Consequently, hand hygiene is extremely important to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. It also interrupts transmission of other viruses and bacteria causing common colds, flu and pneumonia, thus reducing the general burden of disease.

Hygiene: UN-Water GLAAS findings on national policies, plans, targets and finance

Understanding how governments and external support agencies (ESAs) are addressing hygiene is critical during the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to be so after. Therefore, it is important to understand what actions are being taken by governments to enable hygiene promotion, facilities and handwashing with soap. This highlight summarizes data collected by the GLAAS initiative on how governments and ESAs are supporting hygiene, including information on national policies, plans targets and finance.

Hygiene - UN-Water GLAAS findings on national policies, plans, targets and finance
23 June 2020

Hygiene - UN-Water GLAAS findings on national policies, plans, targets and finance
This highlight summarizes data collected by the GLAAS initiative on how governments and ESAs are supporting hygiene, including information on national...
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Scientific brief on the status of environmental surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 virus

Research is underway in many countries to detect non-infective viral fragments of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and sludge similar to methods that have been successfully used in the polio eradication programme. This brief explores potential use cases, considerations, and research needs for this emerging tool for SARS-CoV-2 detection that may be explored in close coordination with established public health surveillance for COVID-19. At present, there is not yet sufficient evidence to recommend environmental surveillance as a standard approach for COVID-19 surveillance.

Managing COVID-19 on ships

This document has been prepared based on the evidence currently available about Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) transmission (human-to-human transmission via respiratory droplets or direct contact from an infected individual).


Managing COVID-19 on aviation

This document is based on the evidence currently available about coronavirus disease (COVID-19) transmission (human-to-human transmission primarily via respiratory droplets from, or direct contact with, an infected individual). It should be used in conjunction with WHO’s Handbook for the Management of Public Health Events in Air Transport.