As the number of cases continues to rise, it is all hands on deck at Tan Tock Seng Hospital and the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, where ...
SINGAPORE: At the National Centre for Infectious Diseases screening centre, one important part of the defence against the pandemic has been none other than ice cream.
That is how it has been for the staff running both the TTSH emergency department and the screening centre at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases in the time of the coronavirus.While their department used to have about 20 doctors on shift at any time in the day, it has been a whole new ballgame since Chinese New Year.
“I said, ‘Hm, this might be something.’ So when I came back, the department had already started screening,” recounted Manauis. “We started screening for Wuhan on Jan 2.”That was the day Singapore’s Ministry of Health announced that it was monitoring the pneumonia outbreak closely, and sent a circular to medical practitioners here.
“We knew that by the time it were to come from Wuhan to Singapore, it would’ve been ... a significant outbreak in the world or at least in this part of the region.”The department started screening for the new coronavirus in a “very small, dedicated space”. “We were on call 24/7. Every Saturday, we’d train . During the week, we’d look at protocols — we’d look at whether our processes were working well, whether we had to manage any choke points in the screening centre,” she recounted.
That came about when the MOH changed the definition of a suspect case, following the transmission of the coronavirus at a health products shop visited by Chinese tourists. “The patients came in the afternoon and at night. And at night, we have less manpower. We had to open the tentage until 3am, with a lot of patients having to wait a little bit longer. So that was a struggle.”There are still hundreds of patients screened daily, although the challenge as of late is not the numbers but the space needed, as the spike has been among migrant workers, and the tentage outside the screening centre is “perennially full”.
While there is swabbing done at the dormitories now, some of the workers need to go to the screening centre depending on their symptoms. “There were papers that came out, and there were positive cases which presented only with anosmia,” she explained. They work a 10-day cycle as part of a group of more than 100 people, including nurses and other healthcare workers, running the screening centre.
The thing is, her department is not only working at the screening centre, but also attending to the usual emergency cases. To do this, the staff have cancelled their leave and reduced their days off. “Sometimes walk-in patients ... are close contacts , so we have to protect our front-line staff,” said Manauis.
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