Recommended Citation
McCullough PA, Eidt J, Rangaswami J, Lerma E, Tumlin J, Wheelan K, Katz N, Lepor NE, Vijay K, Soman S, Singh B, McCullough SP, McCullough HB, Palazzuoli A, Ruocco GM, Ronco C. Urgent need for individual mobile phone and institutional reporting of at home, hospitalized, and intensive care unit cases of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection. Reviews in cardiovascular medicine 2020; 21(1):1-7.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-30-2020
Publication Title
Reviews in cardiovascular medicine
Abstract
Approximately 90 days of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) spreading originally from Wuhan, China, and across the globe has led to a widespread chain of events with imminent threats to the fragile relationship between community health and economic health. Despite near hourly reporting on this crisis, there has been no regular, updated, or accurate reporting of hospitalizations for COVID-19. It is known that many test-positive individuals may not develop symptoms or have a mild self-limited viral syndrome consisting of fever, malaise, dry cough, and constitutional symptoms. However some individuals develop a more fulminant syndrome including viral pneumonia, respiratory failure requiring oxygen, acute respiratory distress syndrome requiring mechanical ventilation, and in substantial fractions leading to death attributable to COVID-19. The pandemic is evolving in a clustered, non-inform fashion resulting in many hospitals with preparedness but few or no cases, and others that are completely overwhelmed. Thus, a considerable risk of spread when personal protection equipment becomes exhausted and a large fraction of mortality in those not offered mechanical ventilation are both attributable to a crisis due to maldistribution of resources. The pandemic is amenable to self-reporting through a mobile phone application that could obtain critical information on suspected cases and report on the results of self testing and actions taken. The only method to understand the clustering and the immediate hospital resource needs is mandatory, uniform, daily reporting of hospital censuses of COVID-19 cases admitted to hospital wards and intensive care units. Current reports of hospitalizations are delayed, uncertain, and wholly inadequate. This paper urges all the relevant stakeholders to take up self-reporting and reporting of hospitalizations of COVID-19 as an urgent task in combating this devastating pandemic.
Medical Subject Headings
Ambulatory Care; Coronavirus Infections; Critical Care; Health Resources; Hospitalization; Hospitals; Humans; Intensive Care Units; Mandatory Reporting; Mobile Applications; Pandemics; Pneumonia, Viral; Residence Characteristics; Self Report
PubMed ID
32259899
Volume
21
Issue
1
First Page
1
Last Page
7
