Triage
The journey of a patient in UOGC begins in the triage area. Patients
were given a mask on entry into UOGC until it was made mandatory by the
government for everyone to wear a mask outside their home. Each patient
completes a declaration form used to stratify their risk. Patients with
travel history as well as contact history with anyone suspected or
confirmed to have COVID-19, fever, or acute respiratory symptoms are
immediately isolated. Accompanying persons are submitted to the same
screening criteria. The triage criteria is regularly updated based on
the “suspect case” definition revisions by MOH[7] in response to the evolving pandemic. During
its first week of implementation, a positive travel history only
included patients with recent travel to mainland China. This quickly
expanded to include South Korea, then Japan, before finally including
all persons with any travel history outside of Singapore when there was
a significant rise in the COVID-19 cases globally.