Leveraging electronic medical records for passive disease surveillance in a COVID-19 care facility

COVID-19: down but not out

“…The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic was caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which has behaved quite differently from its other zoonotic predecessors SARS-CoV (emerged in 2003) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (emerged in 2012) in terms of biological characteristics and scale, including atypical clinical manifestations, some of which are reported in this issue. [ 3 4 5 ] Besides this, COVID-19 also posed numerous challenges to health systems,[ 6 ] including control and management in congregate living settings such as dormitories that house migrant workers,[ 7 8 9 ] as well as the well-being and training of health professionals. [ 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ] Further, even though evidence-based therapies for COVID-19 were made available with the first antiviral remdesivir approved for use under emergency authorisation (in Singapore, this was under the pandemic special access route) within a year of the start of the pandemic, healthcare professionals had to continually review evidence for treatment, combat misinformation, and in some instances, conduct studies to evaluate therapies that were promulgated by some quarters but were eventually not substantiated.…”