SARS-CoV-2 has been identified as the pathogen causing the outbreak of COVID-19 that started in Wuhan, China. It had human-to-human transmission ability. The main transmission patterns were observed to be respiratory droplets transmission and contact. The major aim of this study is to propose a protocol that may be used as a guide to reduce the incidence of COVID-19 infections among otolaryngology care teams.
This study was done to show the efficacy of our protocol to prevent transmission to health-care providers. It contained a series of protective measures that we applied to all health-care providers, then testing our providers for COVID-19 using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction along with IgM and IgG testing.
The effective implementation resulted in zero transmissions to our health-care providers during the duration of the initial study. 150 sinonasal, skull base, open airway, and endoscopy procedures were involved during this study. At the conclusion of the initial 5 weeks, no health-care providers test positive for SARS-CoV-2.
This study provided a protocol to provide care for all patients in the clinic, hospital, emergent, intensive, and surgical settings with no transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by symptomatology and post-evaluation testing.
Reference: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1945892420927178
