(Fighting against New Coronary Pneumonia) Hong Kong fights the epidemic with one heart: the designated hospitals for the new crown treat patients in "three layers"

　　China News Agency, Hong Kong, March 29th: Hong Kong fights the epidemic with one heart: the designated hospitals for the new crown treat patients in "three layers"

　　China News Agency reporter Zeng Ping

　　In early March this year, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, a leading hospital in Kowloon, Hong Kong, began to be converted into a designated hospital for patients with severe new crowns.

Within a few days, the hospital successfully transferred hundreds of non-COVID-19 patients to other public hospitals or rehabilitation hospitals, and renovated and renovated existing wards to free up space and manpower to treat COVID-19 patients.

The staff of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority and the doctors of the hospital were interviewed by a reporter from China News Agency on the 28th, detailing the shunting and stratification mechanism and the effectiveness of centralized treatment in the hospital.

　　Queen Elizabeth Hospital is one of the general hospitals in Hong Kong with an experienced medical team.

Tang Kam-shing, chief administrative manager (medical grade) of the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, said that this was the reason for the decision to convert Queen Elizabeth Hospital into a designated hospital for COVID-19. There are many elderly patients in the fifth wave of the epidemic, and they usually need more than COVID-19. There may also be interdisciplinary treatment needs such as surgery and orthopedics.

　　In order to reduce death, severe illness and infection, Hong Kong currently provides triage and stratified treatment according to the condition of new crown patients, among which the first and second tiers of critically ill patients are concentrated in hospitals.

Hu Dechao, director of the Department of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, said that the hospital's new crown beds are further divided into three layers based on facilities. Severe patients who require high concentrations of oxygen or ventilators are on the first layer, and moderate or relatively stable patients are on the first layer. on the second and third floors.

　　After the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was converted into a designated hospital, there are about 1,500 new crown beds.

Hu Dechao said that the first and second floors are mainly in charge of internal medicine, infectious diseases, and pulmonary physicians, and the third floor is jointly looked after by internal medicine and non-internal medical nurses.

At the same time, in order to better treat severe new crown patients, the number of beds in the intensive care unit has been doubled.

　　"Our doctors on the first, second and third floors have good cooperation." Deng Jincheng said that if the patients in the third floor ward are more serious, they will go to the first and second floors, and the patients on the upper two floors sometimes get better Can go to the third floor.

Clinical colleagues consider a basket of factors to determine which tier a patient is most appropriate to receive.

At Queen Elizabeth Hospital, there has been a good inter-specialty collaboration during this time.

　　The establishment of designated hospitals to focus on the treatment of severe COVID-19 patients is one of the treatment strategies adopted by the SAR government after listening to the opinions of mainland experts.

Deng Jincheng said the benefits of this move are clear.

First of all, a prominent problem in the past was the simultaneous admission of new crown patients and non-new crown patients, and the control of nosocomial infection was quite difficult.

Furthermore, when the patient's condition changes, the speed and response of centralized treatment by experts are faster.

Finally, physicians are working better together when treating COVID-19 patients.

"Everyone focus on doing this, it will be much more convenient and easier."

　　Hu Dechao, who takes care of patients on the front line, said that after the transfer to a designated hospital, many third-floor wards were vacated, and the situation of patients staying in the A&E department for a long time and delaying treatment has improved, and due to early receiving appropriate treatment, severe illness and death also corresponded has decreased.

"The time, treatment and resources of patient turnover have improved." He said that many patients needed to inhale high concentrations of oxygen at the peak in March, and now such severe cases have begun to decline.

Overall, severe cases have dropped by about a quarter to a third, he observed.

　　This trend is in line with the overall trend of the epidemic in Hong Kong.

Deng Jincheng said that the epidemic peaked in early March, and the number of deaths began to slowly decline in about a week.

Since the adoption of triage stratification and centralized treatment strategies, "the number of deaths has fallen."

He said a significant number of elderly patients died in the emergency room in early March, but the situation has improved significantly.

The waiting time was "in days", now it is "in hours".

During this time, more than 10 to 20 patients were seen waiting in the middle of the night, but this did not mean that there was a lag.

　　"The numbers of hospital discharges in the past few days are encouraging." Deng Jincheng said, hoping that the fifth wave of the epidemic will continue to fall.

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