Manpower
Hospital transmission has shown to pose a real and serious threat to
healthcare personnel and patients [5]. To prevent
cross contamination within UOGC and other areas of the hospital, a
dedicated team of doctors and nurses is scheduled to service the
isolation area. Each team consists of a senior and junior doctor, and
two nurses working 12-hour shifts for 7 days in a row. Additional
support for the isolation team is provided by a separate team consisting
of Obstetricians, Gynaecologists and Infectious Disease (ID) physicians.
This arrangement ensured that both the quality of care and safety of
patients were not compromised during the crisis.
Standard precautions in operation prior to the COVID-19 outbreak
included the practice of good hand hygiene. We adopted additional
droplet and airborne precautions in the form of enhanced Personal
Protection Equipment (PPE) in response to the outbreak[6]. This includes the use of N95 masks, gowns,
gloves, goggles or visors and head caps. The Powered Air-Purifying
Respirator (PAPR) is used for collection of nasopharyngeal swabs for
COVID-19 testing or when performing any aerosol-inducing procedure. At
the early stages of the outbreak, all hospital staff were fitted with
appropriate size N95 masks and trained on the proper sequence of donning
and removing PPE.
Apart from goggles and visors, the enhanced PPE is single use. A new set
is donned for each patient. Used PPE items are discarded into yellow
biohazard bags. The housekeepers in enhanced PPE then perform terminal
cleaning on the consultation room after each use and promptly dispose of
these biohazard bags. Equipment is cleaned and disinfected between use.