isit the Center for Disease Control website (Links to an external site.) and go to the Diseases and Conditions pages. Choose a topic of interest and review any data or statistics provided under that topic. Discuss how evidence-based practice and epidemiology are used to improve prevention and health promotion in your chosen topic

Triage of Suspected COVID-19 Patients

The National Syndromic Surveillance Program (SSP) has the responsibility of collecting electronic health data in real-time. Following the surge in patients requiring triage, the NSSP has observed that the emergency department visits were on a decline by 42% in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, which represented 1.2 million persons from 2.1 million each week as of April 2020 (Hartnett, et al., 2020). There has also been a steep decrease in the number of persons based on the demographic data in which it is evident that less than females were found out to be having lower visits in the emergency department relative to their male counterparts. The disease-related visits were also observed to be four times higher when the pandemic began as compared to the current rations.

In the course of minimizing the SARS, the CDC has carried out steps of recommending the use of virtual visits and lines for triage help while at the same time ensuring that everybody adheres to the guidelines provided including the wearing of masks and social distancing. As of March 13, 2020, the United States had made a declaration of a national emergency for the control of the spread of the virus. In the course of the quantification of the effects of the COVID-19 effects, the CDC made efforts of comparing the volume of emergency visits within the four-week period during the early days of the pandemic and the subsequent weeks (Hartnett, et al., 2020). As such the CDC found out that containment measures would heavily contribute to the reduction in the rates of the spread of COVID-19. The Weekly number of emergency visits were also observed to be reduced following the adherence to the COVID-19 containment measures, according to the CDC report.

 

Reference

Hartnett, K. P., Kite-Powell, A., DeVies, J., Coletta, M. A., Boehmer, T. K., Adjemian, J., & Gundlapalli, A. V. (2020). Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on emergency department visits—United States, January 1, 2019–May 30, 2020. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 69(23), 699.

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