Community medical centers ramp up COVID-related treatment
Community medical centers in local neighborhoods and subdistricts have been beefing up efforts to offer medical care for fever patients to tackle the recent surging COVID-related illness.
Since community medical centers were expanded to include fever clinics in mid-December, they have been handling around 50 percent of total fever patients, city health authorities said.
Medical experts have been calling for early treatment and intervention for the vulnerable and high-risk group so that ICU wards and medical resources are saved for those in critical conditions.
Standardized prevention and treatment protocols are essential as all tiers of medical institutions are mobilized to tackle the pandemic.
Local health authorities have been calling on community health-care centers to expand as much as possible their treatment capabilities.
Staff are equipping the chromatography machines at the Gumei Community Medical Service Center.
Medical services currently being offered at community hospitals:
- Oxygen treatment is covered at every one of the 335 community medical service centers in the city.
- Intravenous injection service is available at 95 percent of community medical service centers.
- Antiviral drugs have been prescribed to suitable patients under the guidance of city-level medical experts with over 15,000 subscriptions to date.
- Over 60 percent of community medical service centers are equipped with inhalation therapy, with 713 inhalation facilities and 2,000 instances of service offered.
Patients with mild symptoms were admitted into community hospital wards.
Treatment and monitoring facilities:
- More Fingertip Pulse Oximeters will be allocated to neighborhood health-care service stations in addition to at least 20 oximeters currently available at each station.
- 27 community medical service centers are currently equipped with chromatography machines and another batch will be added by next week to cover 45 service centers.
- A total of 445 electrocardiogram monitors were newly added to ensure early detection of critical patients.
- Patient wards outside of secondary and tertiary hospitals have taken in fever patients with mild symptoms or those in the rehabilitation period. Since January 1, nearly 3,000 patients were admitted to community hospital wards.
- Hospital-at-home service has also been expanded with about 23,000 patients being covered by the service since December.
