HOUSTON, Texas — The city of Houston is finding new ways to fight the spread of coronavirus.
This time, health department employees are taking to the streets to teach residents how to protect themselves.
They’re hoping a new emergency outreach campaign called “Better Together” will help save lives.
They dropped off information on what residents can do to stop the spread of the virus.
“Just wearing a mask, that’s great, but that’s not going to do it," Dr. Faith Foreman-Hays, with the Houston Health Department, said.
They canvased an apartment complex in Sharpstown because data from tests results showed high COVID-19 positivity cases there.
“So we wanted to go door-to-door and really get the message to the people where ... they live, where they work, where they play," Foreman-Hays said.
Health officials hope the PSA drops the positivity rate from 23 percent to 5 percent by the end of August.
“Better Together” urges everyone to practice the basic fundamental steps we’ve all heard since the pandemic started: wash your hands, wear a mask, stay at least six feet apart from others and get tested.
“We’re only going to get better in Houston by doing this together and those four things have to work in concert,” Foreman-Hays said.
The health department has flooded these high-positivity communities with more than 71,000 flyers.
She said, “We’re not new to this type of strategy but we want to, we know that this strategy works for us and has worked in the past so we want to do that for our; the pandemic that we’re all experiencing.”