Abstract
BackgroundThe massive outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Daegu city and Gyeongsangbuk-do, Republic of Korea (ROK), caused the exponential increase in new cases exceeding 5000 within 6 weeks. Therefore, the community treatment center (CTC) with a digital health care monitoring system based on the smartphone application and personal health record platform (PHR) was implemented. Thus, we report our experience in one of the CTCs to investigate the role of CTC and the feasibility of the digital health care monitoring system in the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThe Gyeongbuk-Daegu 2 CTC was set up at the private residential facility. Admission criteria were 1) patients < 65 years with COVID-19, 2) patients without underlying medical comorbidities, and 3) COVID-19 disease severity of mild class. Admitted patients were placed under monitoring of vital signs and symptoms. Clinical information was collected using the smartphone application or telephone communication. Collected information was displayed on the PHR platform in a real-time fashion for close monitoring.ResultsFrom Mar 3, 2020, to Mar 26, 2020, there was a total of 290 patients admitted to the facility. Males were 104 (35.9%). The median age was 37 years. The median time between the COVID-19 diagnosis and admission was 7 days. Five patients were identified and were transferred to the designed COVID-19 treatment hospital for their urgent medical needs. The smartphone application usage to report vital signs and symptoms was noted in 96% of the patients. There were no deaths of the patients.ConclusionsOur results suggest that implementation of the CTC using a commercial residence facility and digital health care technology may offer valuable solutions to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 outbreak.
Highlights
The massive outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Daegu city and Gyeongsangbukdo, Republic of Korea (ROK), caused the exponential increase in new cases exceeding 5000 within 6 weeks
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak was initially identified in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019, and it rapidly spread in other countries throughout the world, resulting in a global pandemic [1]
In the Republic of Korea (ROK), the first case of COVID-19 was reported in early January 2020, and the number of new cases was on the gradual increase until late February 2020 when large clusters of new cases were identified in Daegu city and the adjacent province of Gyeongsangbuk-do [4]
Summary
The massive outbreak of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Daegu city and Gyeongsangbukdo, Republic of Korea (ROK), caused the exponential increase in new cases exceeding 5000 within 6 weeks. As a result of the on-going outbreak and a sudden influx of patients diagnosed with COVID-19, there were shortages of hospital beds and other resources in the local hospitals in Daegu city and province of Gyeongsangbuk-do Such strain on hospital resources led to unprecedented numbers of home isolation of COVID-19 patients. To address the safety of home-isolated COVID-19 patients and the allocation of scarce hospital resources, the community treatment center (CTC) with a digital health care monitoring system was designed and implemented as a part of the triage and management efforts for the COVID-19 patients by the Government of the ROK [4]. We report our experience in one of the 12 CTCs, the Gyeongbuk-Daegu 2 CTC, located in Gyeongju, Gyeongsangbuk-do, which was deemed the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in the ROK
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