Document Type
Article
Department
Family Medicine
Abstract
As the world struggles to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, this article talks about the experience and findings of the first COVID-19 screening facility in a tertiary care hospital in Karachi, Pakistan. Department of Family Medicine at Aga Khan University (AKU) took initiative where COVID-19 screening of stable patients first began in a dedicated area. Since testing kits were limited and community spread had not started, nurses would screen every walk-in patient based on the presence of fever, cough, travel history and exposure to COVID-19 positive patient in the last 14 days, and advise swab testing if indicated. Out of 742-screened patients, approximately 66% were males and 34% were females. 38% of patients reported fever and 54% of patients reported cough. 8% (65) patients checked all three screening criteria of cough, fever and international travel exposure whereas 35% were asymptomatic. The majority had clinical exposure (38.3%) followed by public exposure (33.4%) and international travel exposure (19.8%).
Publication (Name of Journal)
Liaquat National Journal of Primary Care
Recommended Citation
Kanwal, F.,
Lal, K. K.,
Qureshi, A.
(2021). Reflections of an earliest established screening and testing facility for COVID-19 in the largest Metropolis, Pakistan. Liaquat National Journal of Primary Care, 3(1), 49-51.
Available at:
https://ecommons.aku.edu/pakistan_fhs_mc_fam_med/254
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.