Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 May;36(5):296-304.
doi: 10.1002/kjm2.12228. Epub 2020 May 6.

Infection control measures of a Taiwanese hospital to confront the COVID-19 pandemic

Ya-Ting Chang  1 , Chun-Yu Lin  1   2 , Ming-Ju Tsai  1   2 , Ching-Tzu Hung  3 , Chia-Wen Hsu  4 , Po-Liang Lu  1   2   5 , Ming-Feng Hou  6
Affiliations

Infection control measures of a Taiwanese hospital to confront the COVID-19 pandemic

Ya-Ting Chang et al. Kaohsiung J Med Sci. 2020 May.

Abstract

The World Health Organization announced the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak a pandemic on 12 March 2020. Although being in proximity to China, the original epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, Taiwan has maintained a low number of COVID-19 cases despite its close social ties and heavy traffic between Taiwan and China. Containment strategies executed by the Taiwanese government have attracted global attention. Similarly, in-hospital settings, high alertness and swift responses to the changing outbreak situation are necessary to ensure hospital staff members' safety so they can continue to save patients' lives. Herein, we present infection control measures that can be adopted in hospital settings that were executed in a Taiwanese hospital to confront the COVID-19 pandemic, including emergency preparedness and responses from the hospital administration, education, surveillance, patient flow arrangement, the partition of hospital zones, and the prevention of a systemic shutdown by using the "divided cabin, divided flow" strategy. The measures implemented by a Taiwan hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic may not be universally applicable in every hospital. Nonetheless, the presented infection control methods have been practically executed and can be referenced or modified to fit each hospital's unique condition.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Taiwan; infection control; novel coronavirus.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Analysis of the potential weak points of emergency response to the COVID‐19 (coronavirus disease 2019) outbreak
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Hospital layout comprising the outdoor clinic section, drive‐through pharmacy, outdoor screening area, and portable X‐ray tent outside the emergency room. Visitors enter the hospital through two designated gates
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
National Health Insurance working stations to access NHI cards and hand stamps used for 1‐day passes
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Outdoor clinic section used to treat patients without symptoms or signs of infectious diseases with travel history to COVID‐19 endemic areas
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Outdoor screening area built with tents to screen ambulatory noncritical patients at risk of COVID‐19 infection
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Li Q, Guan X, Wu P, Wang X, Zhou L, Tong Y, et al. Early transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia. N Engl J Med. 2020;382(13):1199–1207. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Assiri A, McGeer A, Perl TM, Price CS, Al Rabeeah AA, Cummings DA, et al. Hospital outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. N Engl J Med. 2013;369(5):407–416. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Yu P, Zhu J, Zhang Z, Han Y, Huang L. A familial cluster of infection associated with the 2019 novel coronavirus indicating potential person‐to‐person transmission during the incubation period. J Infect Dis. 2020:jiaa077. 10.1093/infdis/jiaa077. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Peeri NC, Shrestha N, Rahman MS, Zaki R, Tan Z, Bibi S, et al. The SARS, MERS and novel coronavirus (COVID‐19) epidemics, the newest and biggest global health threats: What lessons have we learned? Int J Epidemiol. 2020:dyaa033. 10.1093/ije/dyaa033. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Young BE, Ong SWX, Kalimuddin S, Low JG, Tan SY, Loh J, et al. Epidemiologic features and clinical course of patients infected with SARS‐CoV‐2 in Singapore. JAMA. 2020;323:1488. 10.1001/jama.2020.3204. - DOI - PMC - PubMed