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HEALTH-VIRUS-EPIDEMIC-SKOREA-TEST
South Korea dials up virus testing with hospital ‘phone booths’
SEOUL, March 17, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – A South Korean hospital has introduced
phone booth-style coronavirus testing facilities that allow medical staff to
examine patients from behind the safety of a plastic panel, the latest
innovation in the country’s drive to track down infections.
The row of four booths — which use negative air pressure to prevent
harmful particles from escaping outside — stand under a tented shelter
outside the H Plus Yangji Hospital in Seoul.
The hospital dubs them the “Safe Assessment and Fast Evaluation Technical
booths of Yangji hospital” — or SAFETY for short.
Each patient steps into the box for a rapid consultation by intercom with
a medical professional who, if necessary, takes their samples by swabbing
their nose and throat using arm-length rubber gloves built into the panel.
The whole process takes about seven minutes and the booth is then disinfected
and ventilated.
The smaller SAFETY boxes are “significantly easier” to disinfect than the
usual negative-pressure rooms and so are a “much safer space to be tested
in”, hospital president Kim Sang-il told AFP.
“Also each booth only accepts one patient at a time, unlike negative
pressure rooms where patients often need to share space as they get tested,”
he said, adding the hospital’s negative pressure units are now reserved for
treatment purposes.
The South was once the hardest-hit country outside China, where the virus
first emerged, but appears to have brought its outbreak under control thanks
to a huge testing and contact-tracing effort.
By midnight on Monday almost 300,000 people had been tested — processes
that are free to anyone who has been told to have a test by a doctor, or who
tests positive.
Early in the epidemic it introduced drive-through testing for the virus,
with medical staff in protective suits swabbing noses through car windows, a
practice now adopted internationally.
The SAFETY booths offer similar accessibility for those who do not drive –
– and children — and by keeping suspected patients outside, avoid the need
to disinfect parts of the hospital building.
The facility was created based on biosafety cabinets — also known as
isolation glove boxes — where laboratory workers perform operations through
arm-length rubber sleeves.
The South has been recording fewer than 100 new cases a day this week — a
far cry from the 500-600 earlier this month — but authorities have warned of
new small cluster infections emerging in the metropolitan area where half of
the South’s 51 million population is concentrated.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said 84 new
cases had been confirmed on Monday, taking the total to 8,320.
Six more people had died, taking the death toll to 81, it added.
Scores of events — from K-pop concerts to sports matches — have been
cancelled or postponed over the contagion, and President Moon Jae-in
announced Tuesday the formation of an emergency economic council.
BSS/AFP/ARS/1729 hrs