Challenges and priorities in skeletal, gastrointestinal, hepatobiliary, genitourinary and lung scintigraphy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Koutsikos, John; Angelidis, George

On December 29, 2019, a hospital in the City of Wuhan, Hubei Province, in Central China, admitted four individuals with pneumonia. The hospital reported this occurrence to the local center for disease control (CDC), which lead Wuhan CDC staff to initiate a field investigation with a retrospective search for pneumonia patients. On December 31, 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) was alerted by the Chinese authorities for several cases of pneumonia of unknown origin in the City of Wuhan. On January 7, 2020, a novel virus was identified as the causative agent, belonging to the Coronaviridae family (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, SARS-CoV-2). Within the same month, the virus spread to other provinces of China, as well as a number of neighbouring countries. On February 11, 2020, the WHO announced that the SARS-CoV-2 - caused infection would be called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). On February 15, 2020, the first death due to COVID-19 in Europe was reported; a Chinese tourist who died in France. The first COVID-19 case was diagnosed in Greece on February 26th. The WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020. On March 12th, movie theaters, gyms and courtrooms were closed in Greece and on March 13th, with 190 confirmed cases and 1 death, malls, cafés, restaurants, bars, beauty parlors, museums and archaeological sites were also closed. So far, COVID-19 pandemic has affected the way people live and work globally, and has resulted in extreme strain on the healthcare systems worldwide. Most of the nuclear medicine studies are performed on an out-patient basis. Therefore, without effective implementation of the required preventive measures, there is a significant risk for viral transmission when visiting nuclear medicine departments, particularly in periods of high community spread.