Buffer wards for the control of COVID‐19 transmission in hospitals

Abstract

To the Editor: The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought great challenges to the routine diagnosis and treatment of patients. 1 It has been proved in our clinical practice that the buffer ward, as the intermediate platform of pre-examination and risk screening for patients requiring hospitalization, was an effective way to control the COVID-19 transmission in hospitals. 2 However, limited literatures reported the operation and efficiency of the buffer ward. We therefore summarized the admission, characteristics, and outcomes of the patients in buffer wards in our hospital. A total of 1003 patients were included (median age 57 years [interquartile range, IQR, 48-65; range 2-95 years]; 49.5% female; 36.0% cancer) between March 11 and April 23, 2020 (Table 1). Cancer patients, who were vulnerable to COVID-19, were also the focus of this study. Subgroup analyses were performed between cancer and noncancer patients. The demographic distribution between two groups was well balanced (median age 57 years [IQR 50-64; range 3-88 years] and 51.3% female vs median age 57 years [IQR 47-67; range 2-95 years] and 48.4% female; P = .68 for age and P = .39 for gender). Among all the 361 cancer patients, those with thoracic tumors (98, 27.2%), mainly lung cancer, have the most urgent need for hospitalization, followed by gastrointestinal tumors (67, 18.6%) and breast cancer (56, 15.5%) (Table 1). Among the 642 noncancer patients, those with chronic cardio-cerebrovascular diseases (115, 31.2%) were the most affected population, which mirrors findings of other literatures. 3,4 In addition, 19 (3.0%) patients were admitted for thrombotic disease, reflecting the inevitable reality of limited social activities under the epidemic. 5 The process of hospitalization and risk stratification of COVID-19 is shown in Figure 1. All patients would undergo two rounds of risk screening in outpatient and emergency department and buffer ward, respectively. Patients with confirmed infection would be reported immediately and sent to designated hospitals, meanwhile the suspicious This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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