The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents a challenge as well as an opportunity to test the widespread deployment of health education messaging. Care should be taken to ensure that the message is customized to the needs of the community and aims to reduce COVID-19 transmission in a respectful manner that does not stigmatize those already affected. Expertise developed from decades of work in health education needs to be customized to ensure effective health education for key epidemiological groups such as adolescents, youths and travellers, apart from the groups at high risk of severe COVID-19 such as residents of care homes for the elderly and nursing facilities. Further adoption of suitable behaviour-change models and a mix of individual, group and mass approaches can help develop an effective health communication strategy.