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Review
. 2020 May 5:10:100137.
doi: 10.1016/j.onehlt.2020.100137. eCollection 2020 Dec.

Repurposing and reshaping of hospitals during the COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea

Minyoung Her  1
Affiliations
Review

Repurposing and reshaping of hospitals during the COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea

Minyoung Her. One Health. .

Abstract

During the extensive outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in South Korea, many strategies in the hospital setting, such as stratified patient care, the assignment of hospitals/beds by a task force team, and the establishment of dedicated COVID-19 hospitals, dedicated COVID-19 emergency centers, COVID-19 community facilities, and respiratory care split hospitals, were adopted to mitigate community transmission and prevent nosocomial infection. Most of these strategies were used during the Middle East Respiratory syndrome outbreak and were applied again successfully during the COVID-19 outbreak. The reallocation of health care capacity, repurposing of hospitals, and close collaboration between the government and the health care committee might have been the key to successfully addressing the crisis of COVID-19 given the shortage of health care resources.

Keywords: COVID-19; Nosocomial infection; Outbreak; South Korea.

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Conflict of interest statement

None of the authors have any conflict of interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Stratification of hospital/room assignments (Edited from the figure pertaining to assignments of beds/hospitals during the COVID-19 outbreak [6])
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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