Use of Visual Triage in the Early Identification and Isolation of Acute Respiratory Infection Cases for the Control of Hospital Outbreak/Infection in Reference to Middle East Respiratory Syndrome- Corona Virus (MERS CoV)

Introduction: Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS-CoV) that was first identified in Saudi Arabia in 2012. Since then more than 1400 cases were reported from KSA with substantial mortality of about 40%. Objective: To know the role of visual triage in early identification of acute respiratory infection cases in reference to (MERS-CoV). Material and Methods: Hospital Based cross sectional study. Results: This study was carried out to find the effectiveness of visual triage in timely isolation and control of acute respiratory infection in the health care settings. During January to December 2017 total patients passes through visual triage were 1,36,516 , out of that 2240 (1.64%) reported scores 4 and more. During same period 181(0.13%) of patients admitted in various wards from visual triage. Conclusion: Visual triage is very useful in timely isolation of acute respiratory infection cases and prevention of hospital outbreak due to acute respiratory infection, specially disease like MERS-CoV.