New evidence-based clinical practice guideline timely supports hospital infection control of coronavirus disease 2019

Li, Sheyu; Zong, Zhiyong; Sun, Xin; Li, Weimin

We recommended the hospital emergency incident command system (HICS), which should be the primary systematic response of the hospital. 2 Though required by the World Health Organization (WHO) as essential for hospitals to reflect rapidly and efficiently, HICS is in fact not widely adopted in primary and secondary hospitals in China. For guideline users who need detailed information about HICS, we here link the hospital emergency response checklist 7 and the hospital incident command system guidebook 8 in our document. We also recommended diagnostic tools, an early warning score recognising patients who may need intensive care, occupational protection protocols, in-hospital sterilization protocols and isolation protocols for hospital managers and practitioners to rearrange their hospital to deal with the crisis. 2 This new evidence-based guideline of hospital infection control for COVID-19 has provided timely guidance on what to do during the emergency. However, since little was known about the novel virus, only indirect evidence was available, which in turn increased the risk of bias for evidence selection in the LTR strategy. As a result, half of our recommendations are weak and systematic reviews will be involved in some of following guidance documents. The recommendations will be updated when necessary.