Managing Non-COVID Acute Neurology Amidst the Pandemic: Challenges and Work in Progress

Gupta, Anu; Vishnu, Venugopalan Y.; Singh, Mamta B.; Bhatia, Rohit; Rajan, Roopa; Vibha, Deepti; Elavarasi, Arunmozhimaran; Radhakrishnan, Divya; Agarwal, Ayush; Ramanujam, Bhargavi; Das, Animesh; Singh, Rajesh K.; Pandit, Awadh K.; Srivastava, Achal; Tripathi, Manjari; Prasad, Kameshwar; Srivastava, M.V. Padma

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated a global health crisis. Non-COVID diseases across specialties have been significantly compromised. The greatest challenge has been to continue providing care to non-COVID cases with minimum transmission risk to health care workers, patients, and caregivers. In this specter, better described as a medical holocaust, we present our experiences of dealing with acute neurological patients who could access our facility. We attempted to work on three key areas – initial screening using a more inclusive, dynamic checklist for COVID suspicion over and above the emergency triage, a mandatory initial holding on a separate floor of our inpatient service equipped with infection control strategies similar to a COVID-designated area, and daily screening of health care workers and caregivers for symptoms and possible exposures. It was a steep learning curve, a couple of close shaves, and many more lessons that went into the development of an algorithm that seems to be working well.