How should designated COVID-19 hospitals in megacities implement a precise management strategy in response to Omicron?

ABSTRACT

As a new variant of COVID-19 with varied mutations, Omicron is more transmissible, more rapidly contagious, and has a greater risk of reinfection. Given those facts, a precise manage strategy needs to be formulated and implemented in designated megacities. Here, the precise COVID-19 prevention and control strategy for a designated hospital in Shenzhen, China is summarized, including implementation of a two-wing "On duty/On standby" approach based on busy and calm periods, an identification, classification, and grading system for the occupational exposure risks of medical staff, classification of patient transmission risks, separate admission, and an innovative treatment (nasal irrigation). The strategy has enabled the efficient and orderly integration of resources, it has resulted in zero infections among medical staff even during the peak hours of the pandemic at the hospital (1,930 patients admitted to both wings in a single day), and it has significantly reduced the initial period of no virus detection when patients infected with Omicron received saline nasal irrigation (P < 0.001). This strategy has provided evidence of precise prevention and control in a hospital, infection control, and efficient patient treatment in an era when Omicron is widespread.