Table 2.

Final guidance on COVID-19 pandemic ICU triage

Final advice First step is to prioritize patients who are expected to require intensive care for only a relatively short period. Health care workers get prioritized but only if, as part of their work, they have had multiple and risky contacts which patients, exposing them to the COVID-19 virus, while they had insufficient access to personal protection materials due to national or regional shortage. Age is a relevant criterion as a matter of intergenerational solidarity. On the basis of their age, people are classified as belonging to a generation, with younger generations receiving higher priority than older generations. Generations were defined as age groups: 0–20, 21–40, 41–60, 61–80 and 81+. Patients who are already on the ICU should not be compared to patients who still need to be admitted; hence, treatment may not be withdrawn based on such comparisons. Withdrawing ICU treatment is, however, acceptable when it is estimated that the individual patient (not in comparison to others) has insufficient perspectives on recovery in the foreseeable future. The medical criteria that inform this estimation (including the definition of ‘foreseeable future’) may become stricter when the pressure on the ICU continues to increase. If the above criteria are inconclusive: a procedure based on chance is justified, either a lottery or ‘first come, first serve’