Environmental maintenance with effective and useful zoning to protect patients and medical staff from COVID‐19 infection

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has accelerated all over the world, and global health-care systems have become overwhelmed with potentially infectious patients seeking testing and care. It is essential to set up effective and useful zoning to prevent the spread of infection to and from medical staff or other patients with effective use of standard precautions with personal protective equipment (PPE). Methods: We repurposed a general ward into an acute care unit for severe COVID-19 patients taking into consideration airflow, the direction of movement of medical staff, and prevention of the spread of infection to medical staff and other patients. We checked the daily condition and body temperature of all medical staff for 60 days. Results: There was no evidence of COVID-19 infection in any medical staff or other patients during the period thanks to effective and useful zoning with PPE. Conclusion: Special wards and rooms should be set up for future protection of medical staff and other patients, and prevent the explosion of COVID-19 infection with effective and useful zoning with PPE.

Maoto, a traditional herbal medicine, for post-exposure prophylaxis for Japanese healthcare workers exposed to COVID-19: A single center study

“…Second, the infection zoning started three days before the start of PEP. It is possible that there was some effect on the reduction of COVID-19 due to the zoning and use of PPE [ 3 , 4 ]. We think the zoning would have taken time to become effective, probably in late April, because patients may be in the early incubation period when zoning is enforced, thus we think the intervention with maoto was the reason for the low number of infections seen.…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is having great impact on the worldwide health system. Because healthcare workers (HCWs) in hospitals are at extreme risk of exposure to SARS-CoV-2, the management of exposure events to limit nosocomial infections is of great concern [ [1] , [2] , [3] , [4] ]. Long term, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for COVID-19 through vaccination has been shown to be effective [ 5 ], however, it is possible that vaccines for COVID-19 will become less effective against SARS-CoV-2 variants that can escape natural or host immunity provided by these vaccines [ [6] , [7] , [8] ].…”

An Effective Protocol for Management of International Arrivals at Risk in COVID-19 Pandemic: Experience From the Pre-Hospital Covid-19 Response Teams at Xi'an, China

“…It is crucial to understand the effectiveness of these measures, including the preventive strategies for people who are physically close to infectious or diagnosed patients, such as medical staff or public service staff. It is possible that an undetected infection transmission among staff may have resulted in small-scale infection clusters, ( 10 , 11 ) even when implementing the preventive standard recommended by the WHO guidelines ( 12 ) or used in the initial outbreak in Wuhan ( 13 ). The principal finding from our experience is that it is possible to manage international arrivals by air without any introduction of COVID-19 into the local community.…”

Infection prevention and control preparedness among public hospitals and COVID-19 temporary treatment and monitoring facilities in the Philippines

“…Proper segregation, storage, collection, and transport of waste materials in health care facilities catering to infected or suspected patients is critical to ensuring the safety of waste workers and reducing the chance of COVID-19 spreading in the community (16)(17). The amount and type of medical waste people in health care settings are exposed to underscore the importance of strictly observing other IPC domains and measures and regularly assessing for their compliance such as the availability of well-defined IPC policies (18), designation of zones (19), appropriate procedure and knowledge in the use of PPEs (20), and well-articulated directional movements of patients and waste materials. We echo the importance of empowering not only health care workers (21) but also engaging the community (22) in practicing IPC guidelines by strengthening individual, organisational, and community-level facilitators and addressing barriers that potentially discourage its sustained implementation.…”