Introduction
In December 2019, a series of pneumonia cases of unknown etiology
emerged in Wuhan, China [1,2]. This condition was later confirmed to
be coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute
respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). On March 11, 2020, the
World Health Organization characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic
considering its alarming levels of spread and severity. COVID-19 poses a
great public health and clinical burden worldwide. By April 28, 2020,
82,858 confirmed cases and 4,633 deaths related to COVID-19 had been
reported in mainland China. Among them, 50,333 confirmed cases and 3,869
deaths were from Wuhan alone.
As the peak of the epidemic passed, the daily confirmed cases of
SARS-CoV-2 infections in Wuhan dropped to single digits beginning March
11, 2020. Wuhan city ended their lockdown, and people have been allowed
to gradually return to normal working and living conditions since April
8, 2020. As one of the largest medical centers in Wuhan, our hospital
also takes on the medical needs of other non-COVID-19 patients. The
general outpatient obstetrics and gynecology department of Wuhan Union
Hospital has received female patients as usual since March 12. To avoid
hospital infections, a visit
procedure was developed, and a series of COVID-19-associated tests,
including the SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid test (NAT) of throat swabs, chest
CT scan and SARS-CoV-2 specific serological test, are conducted.
Here, to optimize outpatient screening methods after the peak of the
epidemic, we performed a retrospective analysis of COVID-19-associated
test results and reported the visit procedure for obstetrics and
gynecology outpatients from March 12 to April 26, 2020, at our hospital.