Use of triage to prevent and control COVID-19
Triage refers to judging the severity of a disease according to
patients’ main symptoms and signs, and arranging treatments accordingly.
An important basis of triage is the recording of vital signs, including
pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate. In addition,
elevated body temperature and respiratory symptoms are common in
COVID-19, and are closely related to disease severity. Therefore, health
care workers consider body temperature and respiratory symptoms when
implementing triage for patients with COVID-19. When a new infectious
disease emerges, health care workers use triage for the early detection
of infected patients, prevention of disease spread, and protection of
the safety of medical staff. In an outpatient department, and especially
in an emergency department, triage is an important procedure for
managing multiple patients with infectious diseases. The outbreak and
spread of the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in South Korea
during 2015 was due to the limited understanding of this new disease,
the lack of effective prevention and control measures, and the failure
to rapidly identify and isolate patients. Missed diagnoses may also lead
to infection and spread of a disease among medical staff. Therefore,
Koenig proposed that when health care workers encounter a patient who
may have an infectious disease, certain information should be collected
during triage and before recording the patient’s vital signs, a concept
she called “ vital sign zero” (Koenig, 2015). Therefore, to best
control the COVID-19 epidemic,
medical staff must first have the
answers to certain “vital sign zero” questions when encountering a new
patient. In particular, medical staff should inquire about the medical
history, identify potentially exposed patients as early as possible, and
implement measures of isolation and protection. Thus, medical staff
should integrate the concept of “vital sign zero” into the
COVID-19 triage system, maintain a
high degree of vigilance to COVID-19, try to identify COVID-19 patients
as soon as possible, and implement measures that reduce the risk of
disease transmission.