Imaging and COVID-19

Dear Editor,

We found the article “How imaging should properly be used in COVID-19 outbreak: an Italian experience” very interesting (1). Sverzellati et al. (1) noted that the radiology department had a major role in case diagnosis and suggested that “Radiology departments should carefully consider repurposing of their resources and guard the safety of their personnel first, while delivering clinical care.” We would like to share and exchange ideas on this report. Our country, Thailand, is the second country in the timeline of outbreak (2). Due to limited resources, computed tomography imaging is not available in all hospitals and the main diagnosis is the polymerase chain reaction test. Hence, imaging does not play a major role in COVID-19 diagnosis in our country.

Although the concern of safety is raised, there is usually no sufficient protective equipment in the radiology departments. The rearrangement of our department is also not possible due to the limited resources. Therefore, there is no doubt that patients crowd the radiodiagnostic units increasing the risk of infection among the medical personnel. In our country, from about 1600 COVID-19 cases, 27 were medical personnel who took responsibility in diagnosis and care of the patients. It is necessary to find proper measurements to increase efficacy in diagnosis, while guarding the safety of the practitioner. Finally, we also would like to draw attention to possibly more serious safety concerns for medical personnel in other less developed areas in Indochina, such as Myanmar and Lao.