Response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the emergency department designed for emerging infectious diseases in South Korea = Response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the emergency department designed for emerging infectious diseases in South Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Introduction
According to the recent coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic experience, many emergency departments experience difficulties in responding to emerging infectious diseases. Our emergency department was designed to respond to mass outbreaks of infection and modified throughout each phase of COVID-19 outbreak. We aim to describe on the actual responses and medical outcomes.
Material & Method
This research was conducted through a retrospective chart analysis provided by a public medical center with 502 beds since the first report of a COVID-19 confirmed case on January 19th, 2020 to June 15th, 2020 in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Our hospital has remodeled the emergency department based on the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) guidelines and the Korean Regional Emergency Center Facility Standards under the'Emergency Medical Service Act'. We improved facilities, created programs to respond to each phase of an epidemic (Figure 1), and implemented education and training to promote the safety of medical staff. Patients suspected to be infectious were screened in the triage, separating them from general patients, and then treated in isolation wards.
Result
A total of 4,352 patients visited the emergency department. 3,202 cases were screened for COVID-19 and 1,150 cases were treated with general emergent symptoms. Changes in the pattern of statistics on the number of patients treated by the epidemic period are presented in Figure 2. Few patients went under screening measures early on, but the number increased when a large number of confirmed cases occurred in other cities in mid- February related to religious gatherings. Moreover, the numbers surged when massive infection was identified in clubs in Seoul in early May. There was no contamination of emergency department facilities or exposure to medical staff during confirming 5 cases of COVID-19.
Conclusion
Emergency department designed for emerging infectious diseases can carry out a large number of screening tests and hospitalization for COVID-19 while maintaining general medical services.