Table 1.

Safe hospital strategies in South Korea.

Individual strategy		Description
Hospital-level strategies	Education and training of hospital staff	• Personal protective equipment (PPE) – wearing and removing process.
		• High-risk behaviors and conditions.
		• Environmental cleaning and disinfection.
	Universal masking and hand hygiene	• All visitors and staff were required to wear a mask in the hospital.
		• Hand sanitizer was placed throughout the hospital.
	Inpatient monitoring for new-onset fever and respiratory symptoms	Hospitalized patients with new-onset fever or respiratory symptoms were screened and SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR was done based on individual assessment.
Governmental strategies	Hospital gate screening (strengthened triage in the emergency room and at the main hospital entrance)	• A restricted number of hospital gates were opened.
		• Fever, respiratory symptoms, and epidemiological relevance were screened at the entrance; a fever detector, structured reporting form, and a mobile application were used.
	Specialized clinics for patients suspected to have COVID-19	Two specialized clinics were put into operation outside the main hospital building during the COVID-19 pandemic.
		• Clinics for patients under investigation who had an epidemiological link with COVID-19.
		• Clinics for patients with fever or respiratory symptoms.
	Preemptive isolation of pneumonia patients	All patients with pneumonia were preemptively isolated; they were released only after negative confirmation of SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR.
	High throughput diagnostic testing (RT-PCR)	Rapid testing enabled efficient operation of the insufficient isolation rooms.
	Strategies to reduce the hospital workload for COVID-19	• Patients with a mild illness were guided to take SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR tests at public health centers, not at hospitals.
		• Patients with mild laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 were cared for in residential treatment centers.
	Telemedicine	Patients from COVID-19 outbreak areas were not permitted to visit the hospitals. Instead, they were counseled and prescribed medicine via telemedicine.

COVID-19, coronavirus disease 2019; SARS-CoV-2, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.