The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) yesterday further revised its COVID-19 triage criteria, saying that only moderate or severe cases, infants under three months old with a fever and people who are in need of hospitalization would be admitted to hospitals.
Following discussions with local governments, health departments have been asked to follow the new criteria, starting yesterday, said Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞), deputy head of the CECC’s medical response division.
“As there have been more than 60,000 local cases reported daily in the past few days, we need to keep more hospital beds free for cases in need,” he said. “We hope to keep the beds for COVID-19 patients with moderate or severe illness, or other diseases, such as cancer, underlying health issues or surgery patients.”
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Observations at hospitals over the past few weeks have shown that COVID-19 patients who were previously subject to hospitalization, including people aged 80 or older, women who are more than 36 weeks pregnant and infants aged three months to 12 months with a high fever, might not need to be hospitalized for observation, Lo said.
More than 50 enhanced centralized quarantine facilities and 46 enhanced disease prevention hotels for confirmed cases have been set up across the nation, so accommodation capacity is enough to admit high-risk COVID-19 patients, he said.
“Therefore, the revised COVID-19 triage criteria are that moderate or severe cases, infants under three months old with a fever and patients with other illnesses, deemed necessary for hospitalization by a physician, will be admitted to a hospital,” Lo said.
He said other previously hospitalized high-risk patients would be referred to enhanced centralized quarantine facilities or enhanced disease prevention hotels, where health providers offer care services.
If a doctor determines that a patient is suitable for at-home care, they could also return home for isolation, he said.
Local health departments, enhanced disease prevention hotels and hospitals overseeing them, and the Hospital and Social Welfare Organizations Administration Commission, which manages centralized quarantine facilities, have been asked to set up a “green channel” to transport people from the facilities to hospital for emergency treatment when needed, Lo said.
Healthcare professionals stationed at the facilities can also prescribe oral antiviral drugs to those who need them, he added.
Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said the new triage criteria remove rigid conditions such as age and would be based mainly on doctors’ assessments.
He said 2,361 courses of Paxlovid and 821 courses of molnupiravir were prescribed on Monday, and the numbers are expected to increase as procedures for administering the antiviral medications have been simplified. He added that the CECC is in negotiations to buy more of the antiviral drug remdesivir.
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