Screening and managing of suspected or confirmed novel coronavirus (COVID-19) patients: experiences from a tertiary hospital outside Hubei province

Hong Pu; Yujun Xu; Gordon S Doig; Yan Zhou

Novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was detected in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in late 2019, and spread rapidly to over 110 countries and regions around the world. On January 30, 2020, the epidemic was recognized as a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization, and was officially declared a pandemic on 11 March 2020. The increasing number of cases and deaths poses a major global public health challenge 1 and has already brought a heavy burden to the economy of the world. 2 By February 28, 2020, a total of 78,959 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus infection had been reported in China with an overall mortality rate of 3.53% (2,791 cases). 3 Of these, 13,052 cases were reported outside Hubei province, with an overall mortality rate of 0.85% (111 cases). The reasons for the reduced mortality outside Hubei province are unknown, however it is possible the causative virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), loses pathogenicity due to passage, it is possible primary care is now more appropriate than during the early stages of the outbreak and it is also possible that screening for diagnosis and management is more appropriate. 4 During the outbreak in Sichuan province, we developed and implemented a hospital-specific systematic process for screening, isolating and managing suspected and confirmed COVID-19 patients. The purpose of this paper is to report the effectiveness of this process. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.